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Friday, July 1, 2011

Reality in a Higher Dimension?

Have you ever wondered if there was a reality greater than the one you experience everyday? Have you ever allowed your mind to dwell on infinity to the point that your head hurts and then instead of giving up, due to the feeling that you will never understand it or picture it in terms you can relate to, continue to let your mind explore the those thoughts further? One thing that is interesting me lately is the dimensions of time and space or as physicists cal it space-time. It is theorized that there may be as many as 10 dimensions most of which we have yet to detect other than length, width, depth and time (side note: some physicists have theorized that time is not only linear, that is, moving forward. but also moves up and down since it is relative to where you are in space and how fast you are moving). I don't want to get technical, well honestly, I never took a course in physics but understand basic concepts of it beyond Newtonian physics. The reason I am even writing about this is to try to better understand the world in which we all live, to make sense of it and hopefully become better people because of our better understanding.


Leaving time aside, what does a four dimensional object look like to us who are three dimensional (I'm speaking only in terms of space)/ One illustration I've heard a few times but more recently from Rob Bell, a pastor who himself tries to point out God to people who otherwise would not make so called spiritual associations with natural things. He said something to the effect of, and this is not verbatim so forgive me if it's not totally accurate, "imagine you lived in a one dimensional world. To you your world would look like a line. Now imagine a circle, which is two dimensional decided to come visit your world. As it approached it will first appear as a dot which would soon become a short line which would appear to grow longer then as it was fully grown to its full diameter would start to shrink to a smaller line then back to a dot then disappear. To you and your friends that is how it would look. But suppose you were inclined to say, 'I think that was a circle that come to visit us. I have no proof other than what we saw but something in my heart tells me there was more to it, that it wasn't just a line.' His friends would think he was crazy because they all saw the same thing." What it comes down to is perception. Is "what you see is what you get" always true?

Link

Here is a link to a game that illustrates this concept very well and it's really fun too:

http://www.kongregate.com/games/EvilDog/z-rox


I thought about this a while and wondered what a cube, a three dimensional object would look like in a two dimensional world with the same type of illustration. Imagine in our two dimensional world we looked up in the "sky" and suddenly there appeared to be a square which came out of nowhere. Depending on how long it took the 3 dimensional cube to move through our world would determine the duration of us being able to view it. The cube will only look like a square that appears, stays for a period of time, then disappears. The cube existed before it approached our world as it moved in it's own three dimensional world and always remained a cube throughout its passing through our two dimensional world and then continued in its own 3D world even after disappearing in the 2D world.


What does that mean for us then who live in a 3D world? What is a 4D object or person passed through our world. Did it exist in it's own 4D world before coming to our 3D world? We only recognized it as a 3D object that had a beginning, a "life" or duration, then disappearance or "death". It makes you wonder if there really is a higher reality.