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How To Imagine 10 Dimensions

20 November 2006 2 Comments

Here’s an incredible Flash animation that will help you visualize 10 dimensions. This’ll probably blow you clean outside your mind for a while: The Tenth Dimension [LINK]

"Just like that flat lander who can only see two dimensional cross sections of objects from the dimension above, we as three dimensional creatures can only see three dimensional cross sections of our fourth dimensional selves."

And I’ve gone cross-eyed.

Here’s a breakdown:

  • 1st dimension – joining two points – a single line
  • 2nd dimension – Three points – a single plane
  • 3rd – Two intersecting planes – Where we live
  • 4th – Us + time
  • 5th – Us + time + choice, "the subatomic particles that make up our world are collapsed from waves of probabilities simply by the act of observation" – (I’m so glad I read Schroedinger’s Cat)
  • 6th – Folding the 5th through the six to jump to a potential new position in the 5th dimension. Not time travel but a "dimensional jump".
  • 7th – All possible time lines which could have or would have occurred, ever: Infinity.
  • 8th – Joining two different infinities (like 2Dimensions).
  • 9th – folding the 8th – traveling through entirely different infinities.
  • 10th- All possibilities are contained herein. This is where Strings live.

Ok, so it kind of lost me at the 10th but the 1 through 9 made pretty good sense.
 

2 Comments »

  • Jordan said:

    That’s too easy. Here is the explanation I always liked to give students when doing complex analysis.

    1st dimension: (Stick out my pointer finger) this is just a straight line.
    2nd dimension: (Stick out my thumb) you just need to add a line that is perpendicular to the first.
    3rd dimension: (Stick out my middle finger) you just need to add a line that is perpendicular to the first two lines.
    4th dimension: (put hand away) So you just need to image a line that’s perpendicular to all three of those. See, eash?

  • Dan said:

    LOL. I read the last sentence of point 10. as “This is where Sting lives”, probably because of the capital letter used for “Strings”. I prefer that image, I think.

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