Projecting 3-Sphere onto a Plane | Stereographic Projection

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SUMMARY

The discussion centers on the feasibility of projecting a 3-sphere onto a 2D plane using stereographic projection. It is established that while a 2D sphere can be projected onto a 2D plane, projecting a 3-sphere directly onto a 2D plane is not possible. Instead, the correct approach involves first projecting the 3-sphere onto a 3D Euclidean space, followed by a visualization method to represent it in 2D. This distinction is crucial for understanding the limitations of dimensional projections.

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Carol_m
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Hello,

Is it possible to project a hypersphere (a 3-sphere) onto a plane? is this possible using stereographic projection?

Please, if this is possible I would appreciate a nice explain me about how to do it.

Thank you!

Carol
 
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Of course, not!
You may stereographically project the 2-dimensional sphere (bended in 3 dims) on 2-dimensional flat plane. Similiraly, you could develop some projections of 3-D hypershere, bended in 4th dim onto flat 3-D space. But not on 2-D one.

You may think about projecting it first on flat 3D Euclidean space, and then use some common method of visualisation to present it as a 2-D picture.
 
Hello xts,

Thank you for your reply and sorry if I am being too naive but I do not follow your answer. Could you please explain me a bit more? (sorry but this is not my background)

From what I have read in textbooks I know that you can project the surface of a sphere in a 2-D plane, my problem is that I want to project every point in the sphere (not only the surface) on a 2D plane, that's why my question was about hypersphere projection (but maybe I am also confuse about this??).

If you can help me about this I would really appreciate it and sorry again if I am asking the obvious.

Thank you!
 
Carol_m said:
I want to project every point in the sphere (not only the surface) on a 2D plane
Then you must project infinite number of points (some line segment) of your sphere into a single point on your plane.
 

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