by Joe Makintosh

Created on: May 03, 2009

Spacial Dimensions in our universe work in three ways, length, depth and width. However, there could be countless different dimensions so it is difficult imagining them all. There is no 100% proof that there even are other spacial dimensions and the way we imagine them can differ.

The first dimension can be seen as a point like on the end of this sentence. No height, no width and no depth, just a point. This is 1D.

The second dimension is one of the two dimensions we are familiar with. The second dimension comprises of height and width, but no depth. Everything in a 2D world would be flat. The only way to see behind you would be to turn yourself upside-down as you can't turn around as that would require depth to turn in. We would be impossible in a 2D world because we have esophagus which would cause anything about it to fall off of the bottom half and any other cavity would be exposed or downright impossible. A sphere passing through a 2D world would be seen as a line getting longer and then shorter as the sphere leaves the dimension.

The third spacial dimension is the one we reside in. We have height, width and depth.

The fourth dimension is another dimension that we are vaguely familiar with. By 4D we are talking about the fourth spatial dimension so time is not a dimension in this way. We do not know what the fourth dimension is after height, width and depth, but it would allow another direction to move in. However, using the 2D world idea for a moment we can theorise what a 4D person viewing us, 3D people, would be like.

Imagine you are a cartoon on a piece of paper IE. two-dimensional. Left and right would not exist as that would require depth from the perspective of the cartoon. Only forwards and backwards are possible, and even then to look behind you you would have to stand on your head. Now imagine you are looking at a cartoon with a man looking at a wall (a line in reality) and a telephone behind it. The cartoon man would not be able to see the telephone because the wall is in the way. However, you can because all it is is a telephone next to a line. The cartoon man would not be able to see you either because you are looking on from the side, which as we have already established, does not exist to the cartoon man. This can be transposed in to a 4D man looking at a 3D picture of a man, a wall and a telephone, just with another direction of movement added in to the mix.

We have an idea of what certain shapes would look like in the fourth dimension as well. A tesseract (made more commonly known by the likes of Cube 2: Hypercube, which takes place in a Tesseract) is a 4D representation of a cube, which is a 3D representation of a square. A rotating tesseract looks very different to how a a cube rotates. It seems to be a cube weaving in and out of another cube.

Dimensions can be a headache causing theory to grasp because of the space used and because of the fact that we could be completely wrong. Surprisingly, the second dimension can be harder to grasp than the fourth due to the fact that we can not think two-dimensionally whereas we can think - partially anyway - fourth-dimensionally.

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