You will observe the following if you were to venture into the fourth dimension:
- If you were to look at a complex mechanical device such as an internal combustion engine, you'd see every component of that engine, all at the same time. You'd see the outside of the engine and it's innards (pistons, valves, oil, etc) simultaneously. You'd see every internal component of that engine (including every single molecule that makes up each component if a 3D microscope is handy) simultaneously, regardless of where you are in this 4-D.
- If there is a 3-D cube inside a 3-D sphere lying in the 4-D, you'd see both the cube and the sphere simulteniously. But in our dimension, you'd just see the sphere, since the sphere is a closed surface in our dimension. Please note that you'd always see the cube inside the sphere regardless of where you are in the 4-D.
- In the fourth dimension, you'd be able to move left-right, forward-backwards, up-down, and another direction that we have never experienced before: direction Omega and direction Alpha.
- In the second dimension, a 2-D spinning top spins around a point. In our dimension, a 3-D spinning top spins around a line (also referred to as an 'axis', whether it be the x, y or z axis), and in the fourth dimension, a 4-D spinning top spins around a plane.
I have a hypothesis that says the fourth dimension can in fact be visualized by us, but will require we first consider the second dimension. It goes something like this:
A 2D organism has two eyes to perceive depth. One eye consists of a 1D collection of rods and cones ("retina"). These rods and cones are joined to form a 'line' of light-sensitive nerves.
A 3D organism (homo sapiens, for example) has a retina that forms a
plane, or 2D collection of cones and rods. Again, this is called the 'retina', and it is a 2-d plane of visual nerves on the back of our eyeballs.
A 4D organism, therefore, must have a retina that is
cubic (literally, 3-dimensional) in shape
and depth.
We must ask ourselves: can the 2D organism--with it's 1D line of cones and rods--visualize the third dimension? By extension, it stands to reason that if he can, then we can visualize the fourth dimension. But how?
The 2D organism must have a good memory in order to visualize our dimension. He must take the following steps in order to create an accurate visualization of something 3D-ish, such as a sphere. He must:
- Look at the far-left area of the sphere and memorize what he sees (his memory from our perspective will be an infintesmally thin slice of the sphere).
- move his 2D eye a bit to the right and memorize what he sees.*
- Move his 2D eye a bit more over to the right and memorize what he sees.
- He must continue doing this--moving his eyes ever so slightly to the right, remembering what he sees, move his eyes to the right a little more and remember what he sees each time--until a complete memory of the 3D sphere is formed in his memory.
At the end of the mental excersize he notices that his memory--a plane of 1-D images of the sphere--is completely full.
The important thing to understand is that the 2D organism's memory is now a 2D plane consisting of many 1D memories of the 3D object! The 2D being now acesses every memory of each 1D slice of the 3D sphere lying in his 2D memory simultaneously. He thus has sucessfully visualized a 3D sphere.
By extension, we may do the same excersize, if our memories are good enough (we'd need a few harddrives of memory). We must visualize something like a hypersphere (a 4-D sphere), but only one 3D visualization at a time, as with the 2D organism and his visualization of the 3D sphere. As we build our visualization of the hypersphere, we keep a memory of all our previous visualizations of the hypersphere (which will appear as many, many memories of many, many 3-D spheres), until we have a 4D visualization of many 2D spheres stored in a 3D memory.
Because the excersize operates in the second dimension (remember, our retinas are 2D, or planar, curved sheets of cells) and the third dimension (the stored memories of the hypersphere are stored in a 3D memory), then the fourth dimension can conceivably be visualized. this ends my hypothesis.
