A Flatlander imagining the tenth dimension

[MacGyver]

This is semi-related to my other thread about the fifth-dimensional branches for a rock.

For a Flatlander, time would be the third dimension. If this is the case, would their fifth-dimensional branches actually be in the fourth? If the answer is "yes," then you could say to jump from one of their fourth-dimensional branches to another you'd fold through the fifth dimension, and you keep going until you get to the ninth dimension. For a Flatlander, the ninth dimension would be like our tenth, as far as you can go.

Am I misunderstanding something?

[MacGyver]

No replies yet?

Well, this idea could go the other way as well. For a 4D creature the 11th dimension would like our tenth, encompassing all possibilities.

[Rob Bryanton]

String theory says our 4D spacetime is accompanied by 6 "hidden" dimensions. So I've always said that a flatlander scientist would see that they live in 3d spacetime and there are 7 "hidden" dimensions.

MacGyver, I see what you're getting at, but I think that a 2D creature or a 4D creature would each have different frames of reference that they would be able to use to visualize the additional dimensions. A Flatlander would be much more limited, they would not have a vocabulary to think about three spatial dimensions the way we do. A 4D creature living in a 5D spacetime would have more ways of describing and visualizing spatial dimensions than we do, so seeing how the additional dimensions are stacked upon each other would be even easier for them.

I think we have to keep in mind that flatlanders and 4D "hyperlanders" are just thought experiments. How could a flatlander really exist if they can't be made of atoms and molecules? Anything we imagine as being an organized awareness in any of the other dimensions is going to exist in a completely different modality from our own experience.

Where this discussion gets further complicated is my project's insistence that the 4D "now" we are in from instant to instant is actually being constructed one planck length at a time in the fifth dimension. Which means that you and I are already living in what some would call a 5D spacetime! The plot thickens quickly when we mix this idea into our conceptual stew.

http://imaginingthetenthdimension.blogs ... verse.html
http://imaginingthetenthdimension.blogs ... verse.html

Thanks for writing!

Rob