- #1
greggnog
- 5
- 1
- TL;DR Summary
- Theorizing that a 4th spatial dimension doesn't exist.
I know I'm completely wrong about this, but it's been a really fun thought experiment for me. I clearly have no physics training, so apologies for basic mistakes, incorrect terminology, etc.. I would love a deeper explanation of what I'm getting wrong!
So in a 1D universe, you see in 0D (a point), in a 2D universe you see in 1D (a line), and in our 3D universe we see in 2D (a plane). But in our world, our brains have enough information to turn the 2D images we see into 3D interpretations. So it appears that we are seeing in 3D.
The same could be true in a 2D world: I may just see a line, but objects on the 2D plane have varying levels of distance from each other. My brain on a 2D plane could therefore have enough information to expand the 1D image into a 2D one in the same way that this happens in our 3D world. So in this 2D world, why can't we expand this perceived 2D image into a 3D one?
We can't do that because the information is missing. There are an infinite number of possibilities for what that third dimension might look like, so our 2D brains cannot construct a 3D image. There is no third dimension in this 2D world. So back to our dimension: could the same be true? We see in 2D, we interpret that to 3D, but we lack the information to see the fourth dimension. Does that mean that there is no 4th spatial dimension in our 3D world? Or maybe we are in a higher dimension universe and humans just can't see the N-1 dimensional picture?
Anyway, it was fun to think about!
So in a 1D universe, you see in 0D (a point), in a 2D universe you see in 1D (a line), and in our 3D universe we see in 2D (a plane). But in our world, our brains have enough information to turn the 2D images we see into 3D interpretations. So it appears that we are seeing in 3D.
The same could be true in a 2D world: I may just see a line, but objects on the 2D plane have varying levels of distance from each other. My brain on a 2D plane could therefore have enough information to expand the 1D image into a 2D one in the same way that this happens in our 3D world. So in this 2D world, why can't we expand this perceived 2D image into a 3D one?
We can't do that because the information is missing. There are an infinite number of possibilities for what that third dimension might look like, so our 2D brains cannot construct a 3D image. There is no third dimension in this 2D world. So back to our dimension: could the same be true? We see in 2D, we interpret that to 3D, but we lack the information to see the fourth dimension. Does that mean that there is no 4th spatial dimension in our 3D world? Or maybe we are in a higher dimension universe and humans just can't see the N-1 dimensional picture?
Anyway, it was fun to think about!