Every now and then, we come across problems involving dimensions in our daily lives. Possibly problems involving the 1st,2nd,3rd or even the 4th dimension. Little did we take the time to sit down and think if there's more than that. Perhaps it's the perception that thinking up bigger-than-life ideas should be done by mathematicians and scientists.

However, it never harms to at least grasp the idea of the world we are living in. In fact for that reason, I've included two videos which I found on Youtube which explains dimensions up to the tenth in fairly understandable manner to an average joe like me. For ease of understanding, I've provided the transcripts as well.

Warning : I advise you to just watch the video without referring to the transcript you can because it is awfully long.

Part 1



We start with a point.

Like the point we know from geometry, it has no size, no dimension, it's just an imaginary idea that indicates a position in a system.

A second point then can be used to indicate a second position, but it too is of undetermined size.

To create the first dimension, all we need is a line joining any two points.

A first dimensional object has length only, no width or depth.

If we now take our first dimensional line and draw a second line crossing the first, we have entered the second dimension.

The object we are representing now has a length and a width but no depth.

To help us with imaging the higher dimensions, we are going to represent our second dimensional object as being created using a second line which branches off from the first.

Now,let's imagine a race of two dimensional creatures called "flatlanders".

What would it be like to be a flatlander living in a two dimensional world?

A two dimensional creature would only have length and width as if they were the royalty on an impossibly flat card.

Picture this, a flatlander couldn't possibly have a digestive tract because the pipe from their mouth to their bottom would divide them into two pieces.

And a flatlander trying to view our three dimensional world would only be able to perceive shapes in two dimensional cross sections.

A balloon for instance, would start as a tiny dot, become a hollow circle which inexplicably grows to a certain size then shrinks back to a dot before popping out of existence.

And we three dimensional human beings would seem very strange indeed to a flatlander.

Imagining the third dimension is easiest for us because every moment of our lives that's where we are in.

A three dimensional object has length, width and height.

But here's another way to describe the third dimension.

If we imagine an ant walking across a newspaper which is lying on the table, we can pretend the ant as a flatlander, walking along a flat two dimensional newspaper world.

If that paper is folded in the middle, we created a way for our flatlander ant to magically disappear from one position in this two dimensional world and be instantly transported to another.

We can imagine that we did this by taking the two dimensional object and folding it to the dimension above which is our third dimension.

Once again, it will be more convenient for us as we imagine the higher dimensions if we can think of the third dimension in this way.

The third dimension is what you flow through and jump from one point to another in the dimension below.

Okay, the first three dimensions can be described with these words; length, width and depth.

What word can we assign the fourth dimension?

One answer would be duration.

If we think of ourselves as we were one minute ago, and then imagine ourselves as at this moment, the line that we can draw from one minute ago version to the right now version, would be a line in the fourth dimension.

If you are to see your body in the fourth dimension, you will be like a long undulating snake, with your embryonic self at one end and your deceased self at the other.

But because we live from moment to moment in our third dimension, we are like our second dimensional flatlanders.

Just like that flatlander that can only see two dimensional cross sections of objects from dimensions above, we, as three dimensional creatures can only see three dimensional cross sections of our fourth dimensional self.

One of the most intriguing aspects of the being in one dimension stack on the other is that down here at the dimensions below we are unaware of our motions in the dimensions above.

Here is a simple example.

If we make a mobius strip, take a long strip of paper, add one twist to it and take the ends together, and draw a line down the length of it, our line will eventually be on both sides of the paper before it meets back itself.

It appears somewhat amazingly that this strip has only one side.

So it must be a representation of a two dimensional object.

And this means the two dimensional flatlanders traveling down the line we just drew will end up back where they start without ever feeling they have ever left the second dimension.

In reality, they would be looping and twisting in the third dimension even though to them it felt like they were traveling in a straight line.

The fourth dimension, time, feels like a straight line to us, moving from the past to the future.

But that straight line in the fourth dimension is, like the mobius strip, actually twisting and turning in the dimension above.

So the long undulating snake that is us would feel like it's moving in a straight line in the fourth dimension but they would actually be, in the fifth dimension, a multitude of paths that we can branch to it any given moment.

Those branches will be influenced by our own choice, chance and the actions of others.

Quantum physics tells us that the subatomic particles that make up our world are collapsed from waves of probabilities, simply by the act of observation.

In the picture we are drawing for ourselves here, we can now start to see how each of us are collapsing in undetermined way in the probable futures, contained in the fifth dimension, in the fourth dimensional line we are experiencing as time.

What if you want to go back to your own childhood and visit yourself?

We can imagine folding the fourth dimension through the fifth, jumping back through time and space to get there.

But what if you want to get to the world where, for example, you have created a great invention as a child that by now have made you famous and rich?

We can imagine our fourth dimensional self branching off from our current moment in the fifth dimension.

But no matter where you go from here, the great child inventor time line is not one of the available options in your current version of time.

You can't get there from here, no matter how much choice, chance and actions of the others become involved.

There are only two ways you can get into that world.

One would be travel back in time, somehow trigger the events that cause you to come up with your invention, then travel forth in the fifth dimension to see one of the possible new worlds that might have resulted.

But that would be taking the long way.

The short cut that we could take would involves us folding the fifth dimension through the sixth dimension, which allows us to instantly jump from our current position to a different fifth dimensional line.

Okay, that sums up the first part.

Intriguing, right?

Stay tuned for the second part or you can always folds the fifth dimension through the six one and continue reading my second part in another time line. Adieu, greynut signing off.