# Viewing objects in 4 Dimensions **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 15, 2010, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/viewing-objects-in-4-dimensions/532575 "2010-03-15T19:23:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2010, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/viewing-objects-in-4-dimensions/532575/21 "2010-03-17T04:03:42Z")
> [@amanset](#): > > A classic example of 4D weirdness is the [Klein Bottle](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klein_bottle). Gotta love a wikipedia article that includes the sentence, “Gently push a piece of the tube containing the intersection out of the original three dimensional space.” 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![kombatminipig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b5ac83/32.png) [@kombatminipig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kombatminipig)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2010, 10:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/viewing-objects-in-4-dimensions/532575/22 "2010-03-17T10:20:08Z")
> [@Hampshire](#): > > I’m not sure how that image equates to a 4D cube. I still see a 3 dimensional object. It’s bascially a wire frame of a donut with it’s skin rotating around itself much like one of those old [water snake toys](http://www.retrojunk.com/img/art-images/watersnake1.jpg). > It looks cool and all but where do people get “4D” out of this? Because as mentioned above it is (ignoring the semantics, _ce n’est pas une pipe_), what you’re seeing is not a four dimensional cube (or hypercube), but its _shadow_. Compare to how a 3D object can cast a 2D shadow on a plane. Our space is equivalent to a plane for a 4D viewer. And what’s so interesting about the shadow of the hypercube? Rotate it in 4D and it turns itself inside out. ---
**Author:** ![Koxinga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4af34b/32.png) [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2010, 10:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/viewing-objects-in-4-dimensions/532575/23 "2010-03-17T10:48:29Z")
To really address the OP, it seems to me that there’s a fundamental question that _never_ gets a straight answer in these threads: _Is there really a fourth dimension to be perceived_? The _Flatland_ book mentioned above contains a vignette where the 2D square being gets shoved off of his plane of existence and flies around momentarily in the third dimension, such that he’s able to look “down” and see inside his neighbors’ houses. Yes, yes, that was all written for illustrative purposes. But could something like that _really_ happen to one of us three-dimensional creatures? Or is it firmly established that the whole fourth dimension business is just a theoretical construct (like, I suppose, imaginary numbers) that could never be encountered in a physical way? And the first person who comes back with “you _do_ move through a fourth dimension, it’s called ‘time’” – gets smacked with a trout, because you know what I’m talking about. ---
**Author:** ![Hypnagogic\_Jerk](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hypnagogic_jerk/32/4252_2.png) [@Hypnagogic\_Jerk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hypnagogic_Jerk)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2010, 10:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/viewing-objects-in-4-dimensions/532575/24 "2010-03-17T10:59:03Z")
> [@Koxinga](#): > > Or is it firmly established that the whole fourth dimension business is just a theoretical construct (like, I suppose, imaginary numbers) that could never be encountered in a physical way? Imaginary numbers are just as much a theoretical construct as real numbers (or more accurately, real numbers are just as theoretical as imaginary numbers). I don’t know all that much about physics, but I believe some theories posit that the universe is n-dimensional (with n \> 3 and even n \> 4), but then again only a certain number of dimensions are supposed to be space-like. Someone who knows more about this than I will be along shortly. ---
**Author:** ![Jump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/47e85d/32.png) [@Jump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jump)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2010, 1:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/viewing-objects-in-4-dimensions/532575/25 "2010-03-17T13:30:46Z")
If we are viewing the shadow of the 4D cube, why does it have to be moving, in our perspective? A cube would not appear "moving’ to someone in 2D land. ---
**Author:** ![Gagundathar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a183cd/32.png) [@Gagundathar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gagundathar)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2010, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/viewing-objects-in-4-dimensions/532575/26 "2010-03-17T14:01:30Z")
M-Theory posits the existence of 11 spatial dimensions. However, the 4th - 11th dimensions are all closed loops. And, I know this doesn’t help at all. ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2010, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/viewing-objects-in-4-dimensions/532575/27 "2010-03-17T15:01:17Z")
> [@Jump](#): > > If we are viewing the shadow of the 4D cube, why does it have to be moving, in our perspective? > A cube would not appear "moving’ to someone in 2D land. That’s just to show the structure more clearly as it rotates. ---
**Author:** ![Colophon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f05b48/32.png) [@Colophon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colophon)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2010, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/viewing-objects-in-4-dimensions/532575/28 "2010-03-17T15:08:10Z")
> [@Sunspace](#): > > That’s just to show the structure more clearly as it rotates. Yes - imagine the 2D shadow of a 3D cube as it rotates - the shape of the shadow changes. The diagram is a 2D representation of the 3D “shadow” that you would see in our dimension if the tesseract was rotating in four dimensions. The “shadow” itself is not rotating, it is physically changing shape, just the same as the shadow of a rotating cube actually changes shape as the cube rotates. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2010, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/viewing-objects-in-4-dimensions/532575/29 "2010-03-17T16:24:24Z")
**Koxinga** , if you want to really blow your mind, it’s not even certain that there are _three_ spatial dimensions. There are theories (with some experimental evidence behind them, even) that what we think of as a three-dimensional universe is actually just an emergent property closely analogous to a hologram arising from a fundamentally “real” two-dimensional space. ---
**Author:** ![RedSwinglineOne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/a9adbd/32.png) [@RedSwinglineOne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RedSwinglineOne)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2010, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/viewing-objects-in-4-dimensions/532575/30 "2010-03-17T18:24:27Z")
> [@amanset](#): > > A classic example of 4D weirdness is the [Klein Bottle](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klein_bottle). . If you want to own your own 3d representation of a 4d object, you can find it [here.](http://www.kleinbottle.com/) From **ACME Klein bottles**. > [@](#): > > At last, Acme has conquered topological and engineering frontiers to manufacture genuine glass Klein Bottles. These are the finest closed, non-orientable, boundary-free manifolds sold anywhere in our three spatial dimensions. There is lots of entertaining reading there. > [@](#): > > CAUTION! Acme Klein Bottles are crafted from glass, an inorganic solid in an amorphous non-crystalline state. If dropped, an Acme Klein Bottle may shatter, possibly into paired single-sided Möbius loops. But then again, it may not. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2010, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/viewing-objects-in-4-dimensions/532575/31 "2010-03-17T18:48:34Z")
Personally, I like the volume decals the include with the Erlenmyer-style bottles. They’re labeled — 000 ml — 00 ml — 0 ml — 0.0 ml — 0.00 ml ---
**Author:** ![Indistinguishable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/90ced4/32.png) [@Indistinguishable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indistinguishable)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2010, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/viewing-objects-in-4-dimensions/532575/32 "2010-03-17T18:53:23Z")
> [@Koxinga](#): > > To really address the OP, it seems to me that there’s a fundamental question that _never_ gets a straight answer in these threads: _Is there really a fourth dimension to be perceived_? The _Flatland_ book mentioned above contains a vignette where the 2D square being gets shoved off of his plane of existence and flies around momentarily in the third dimension, such that he’s able to look “down” and see inside his neighbors’ houses. Yes, yes, that was all written for illustrative purposes. But could something like that _really_ happen to one of us three-dimensional creatures? Or is it firmly established that the whole fourth dimension business is just a theoretical construct (like, I suppose, imaginary numbers) that could never be encountered in a physical way? As **Hypnagogic Jerk** notes, all mathematics is theoretical (or, perhaps better put, abstract); imaginary numbers are no different from anything else in this respect. But even moreso, you are deeply, intimately familiar with physical realizations of imaginary numbers already (although those stupid names “imaginary” and “real” numbers get in the way of people realizing this); you use this familiarity every time you take two left turns to achieve a U-turn. Complex numbers are just combinations of scaling and rotation, as explained in [this post](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=11223977&postcount=26) and further discussed in [this thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=12024052). ---
**Author:** ![markci](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8491ac/32.png) [@markci](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markci)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2010, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/viewing-objects-in-4-dimensions/532575/33 "2010-03-18T03:44:17Z")
> [@MatthewGerlach](#): > > Today I was aked by a friend about viewing objects in 4 dimensions and didn’t really know how to answer. What stops us from viewing the world through a 4D spectrum, and what would it look like? > > Thanks I have no idea what a 4D “spectrum” is. What stops you is that the universe has 3 spatial dimensions, not 4. (Time is in some sense a fourth dimension, but not spatial). So there is no fourth dimension to see. Some people claim to be able to visualize in 4 dimensions, but most people can’t, probably because our brains evolved in a 3D universe. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/viewing-objects-in-4-dimensions/532575.md?page=1)