The 4th dimension

Let me ask you something, If I tell you that I am a fourth dimension being, how do
you think that I would look like, how would I move through your three-dimension
world? Even before XIX century, the mathematics and physics fields have been
studying the fourth dimension as an overcoming limit of our reality and perception
of this. At present, researchers as the cosmologist Andre Pontzen from University
College London mention: “I can describe mathematically the fourth dimension, but I
can’t mark it”. Because our brains cannot assimilate such a complex concept.
Nevertheless, we can approach to a relative understanding of it by using multiple
analogies and representations.

Dimension is defined by Cambridge dictionary as “a measurement of the

length, width, or height of something”. Everything we know obey these rules. That’s
why, we can start to interpret a 4 dimensioned figure by following a pattern: a point
in the space can be explained as a 0 dimensioned figure, it only has a position in
the space, but it lacks of length, width or height. If you draw a second point, you
can link it with the first one using a line, now you have a 1 dimensioned figure, a
line. If you follow this drawing a second line, by merging the borders of this with the
first one, you get a square, a two dimensioned figure. With two united squares, you
get a cube, a 3 dimensioned figure. Finally, by merging two cubes, you get…
something. This “something” is called by the experts as “Tesseract”, a 4
dimensioned figure conformed by two cubes united by 8 lines within their vertex.

How would we see a tesseract? According to scientific community, a 3d

living being theoretically would only perceive a shadow of this object: a small cube
that gets bigger and gets small again until it dissapears, but why that? To explain
this, we need to go back to 1884, to the novel “Flatland”, written by Edwin Abbott.
The story is based on a 2d square living on a 2d world. The square has a common
life, until some day, this square meets a 3d sphere, for the square is really hard to
interpret this because his world only has forward, backward, left, and right. His
brain doesn’t match the concepts “up and down”. A sphere crossing a 2d plane
would be perceived by the 2d habitants at the beginning as a small circle. While
this sphere crosses the plane, the diameter of the circle would increase. At the
middle of the travel, the diameter of the circle would reach its highest point. Once
this moment is crossed, the diameter of the circle would decrease until disappear,
when the sphere crosses the plane. The exact same occurs with a 4d figure in our
3d plane. Theoretically, we would start watching a small cube, so, while de
tesseract crosses our world, it would get bigger, until it reaches a maximum size,
then it starts to get smaller until disappear.

Since videogames are complex systems that interact mathematically and

digitally with many variables, their role simulating unusual situations is really useful
understanding the fourth dimension of the space. The videogame: Fez, explores
this situation in a deep way with its 2d protagonist: Gomez. At some point of the
adventure, Gomez find a 3d magic cube that allows him to change his perspective.
From then on, he is able to change between different 2d planes to cross a 3d
world. So, walking straight, to cross a wall he needs to align his perspective to the
wall, then, walk to the border, and finally, change to the original perspective and
walk straight. But, how do this work on a 4d world? Marc Ten Bosch is making a
videogame called “Migiakure”, in which the player uses a character to move across
a 4d map, sectioning the map into 3d slices to move across the macro world. But
that’s the thing, 3 dimensions at a time. So, throughout the adventure, there are
many small objects getting bigger while you move towards them, and vice versa.
“Hypercube” is a Minecraft map that applies the same concept, using 3d sections,
you clear the map reaching a coin that is continuously moving through a fourth-
dimension course.

Challenging biological and existential limits will always be something chased

by humanity. It is in our nature, with such an ambiguous concept as the fourth
dimension, results easy to put in perspective when we are heading our intellectual
and even existential limits. But at the end of the day, even a promethean fight is
better than nothing. And maybe, nothing is what we need to set a new approach on
the things we are looking for.
References:

https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-43372285

https://ecoosfera.com/destacados/cientificos-han-detectado-la-cuarta-dimension-
con-estas-pruebas/

https://aleph.org.mx/como-explicar-la-cuarta-dimension

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFUgMSYlVxE&t=149s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNU5eAqHIRs&t=516s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TomimOHcMnM