Physicist: Nopers. But to understand why, it’s important to know what a dimension is.
When someone says “we live in the third dimension” what they should really say (to be overly-precise) is “the universe we inhabit has three spacial dimensions”. There are a few ways that you can tell that you live in a three dimensional world. The easiest is to try to come up with as many mutually-perpendicular directions as you can; you’ll find three without too much trouble, but you’ll never find a fourth.
These three directions are mutually perpendicular and and no new direction can be perpendicular to all three.
If you’re feeling terribly clever, you’ll find lots of other examples that demonstrate the three (and not two or four) dimensionality of our universe. For example, if you can tie a simple knot then you definitely live in three or more dimensions (no knots in 2-D) and if you can make a Klein bottle then you definitely live in four or more dimensions.
In 2-D you can’t tie a knot without the rope passing through itself, and in 3-D you can’t build a Klein bottle without the same problem.
A dimension is a direction. Living in more dimensions means having more directions you can move in. There are many weird physical consequences to living in more dimensions, but the one you’d notice first (if you were somehow to suddenly to appear in a 4-D universe) is immediate death.
An actual 2-D creature would collapse in 3-D. What it considers to be its insides just looks like more surface to we 3-D folk.
If a paper doll (two-dimensional being) were suddenly brought into three dimensional space all of its innards would become outtards. Similarly, there is nothing whatsoever supporting your body in a fourth direction, so if you were to find yourself with a few extra dimensions your insides would follow the path of least (zero) resistance and fall out. It would be super gross, but would make no more of a mess than an infinitely thin oil slick. Any local 4-D critters probably wouldn’t even notice.
I’ve been told that if one found themselves in higher dimensional space they would flop and fold in very much the same way that a piece of paper (nearly 2-D) does in our 3-D world. In higher dimensions we’re all surface.
However a 4-D person sticking their hand in this dimension would reveal an internal cross section in the same way our 3-D hand crossing through a 2-D Universe would be a cross section. Could our hand be physically cut by the 2-D plane? So lower beings going in reverse to higher dimensions would then reveal their entire internal and external surfaces? In essence they’re ripped into one flat piece of meat? If they ended up in 5-D hyperspace devoid of any laws of physics would they flop around helplessly, and at least stay together in that one flat piece?
There’s a paradox in the explanation that we need to think about (I’m not a physicist, so bear with me please). That is, the two dimensional stick figure doesn’t have innards and when he/she suddenly “gets them” in three dimensions, wouldn’t he/she also have the 3D skin to hold them in?
I love the example of the Klein bottle much better here.
further question I’ve been thinking about. If two particles (entanglement) come close to a black hole and one goes in and the other doesn’t, what “happens” to the particle that doesn’t get sucked into the black hole– does it necessarily lose its dimensionality while the other one becomes “holographic”?
Minor correction: knots don’t exist in 3+ dimensions, but 3 dimensions only. As it turns out, knots can’t exist in four dimensions or higher; essentially, there’s too many directions for a rope to go, any knot-like structure can just fall back to an unknotted rope even if the ends of the rope are fixed together.
Really! The three dimensions you refer to is the direction of shape based on the x, y, z axis. The three dimensions we live in are “time, space, and matter”. The fourth dimension as you explain is only a theoretical shape. Who knows what other dimensions there are because as mere mortals we do not really know for sure; however, some people believe in ghosts or spirits, and some people claim evidence of such. If this is true then the realm they live in could be another dimension of existence.
The problem with extra dimensions is that our brains have specifically evolved, or adapted if you prefer, to recognise 3D space. If when we try think of 1 & 2D our mind sees them embedded in 3D. 2D animals might exist if they didn’t have a digestive/colon tract because it is this that would separate the 2 halves of the animal. We might be embedded in 4D. However, dimensions don’t have to be macro and might exist on the quantum level as in Superstring theory and compactification. However, we are never likely to be able to prove this since there is no known way to probe at this level
@Sheila,
Here’s a way to visualise the “innards” of a 2-D person. Take a piece of paper to be the 2 dimensional world; we will create a person to live in it.
First draw a basic outline of a person on the paper. In order to “live” the 2-D person will have to have organs: draw a brain in its head, heart and lungs in its chest, a stomach in its belly and pipes connecting its mouth to the lungs and stomach (note that the mouth has to be on the side of its head so that it opens up into the rest of the paper), as much detail as you feel like.
This 2-D person lives only in the piece of paper. It therefore considers the organs you just drew to be its innards, since the only way to get to them from the edge of the paper is to pass through its “skin” (the outline of your drawing). However you have a 3-D perspective, so you can touch the organs without passing through the skin.
This means that what it considers to be innards, the 3-D universe does not, so they would fall out if you ever able to lift the person of the paper.
Kay Gee
I thought about what you wrote there and I too ask the question as follows: if energy (in our case it’s matter in space and time) never dies, could it change its form in a dimension beyond ours? I too ponder the voices from “spirits” — or whatever they are – that break through to our dimension, although we don’t know what they are, they do make themselves known to us – and there are very few among us humans who can receive these “messages,” or energies or whatever. It’s disturbing to think about the cases of kids esp. who have direct knowledge of past lives, down to specific details, etc. Without getting religious here (i’m an atheist), I think science is better equipped to deal with this question, even though as you say, the aporia such questions open leave us guessing.
But I am grappling right now with how our notion of “energy” might have to be changed.
In 1926 Sir Arthur Eddington said on the verge of the astonishing realization of quantuum physics, “something unknown is doing we don’t know what.” I think we’re in the same place here.
There would be a few problems for 3D matter existing within 4D space, let alone a human surviving within 4 dimensional space!
The first problem is that 4D matter as we understand it would be very unlikely, simply because orbits (or the 4D equivalent) are unstable in 4D space.
So, electrons could not remain in orbit around a nucleus, likewise planets would not remain in orbit around a star (or again, their 4d equivalents).
The reason for this is, (in the case of a planet) the way gravity falls-off much more rapidly in 4D. (Being proportional to 1/r^3 rather than 1/r^2). So, gravity would be unable to ‘balance’ centripetal force and the slightest perturbation of the orbit would result in the planet either flying-off into ‘space’, or spiralling into the star. Likewise, the force holding the electron in orbit around the nucleus would behave in much the same way, so if electrons & proton/neutron nuclei exist in 4D, they would do so as a 4d soup of charged particles.
The other rather major problem is that a 3D object in 4D space would have no substance, exactly like a 2d ‘object’ in 3 space. A 2d object would extend over only 2 dimensions, much like a sheet of paper with no thickness, it would simply not exist.
That fact that a 3D object has no 4D component means that it simply could not exist in 4 space. It would be exactly analogous to the infinitly thin sheet of paper (representing a 2D object) in 3D space.
A comment: I don’t see the point of assigning arbitrary definitions to the term ‘dimension’ (Shiela & Kay Gee). Dimension is NOT defined as ‘Matter’ or energy’ or ‘Ghosts(!)’.
Dimensions are simply the x, y and z co-ordinates that make up 3 space.
Time is often considered a 4th dimension for convenience, though it is not a spacial dimension as-such. 4D space has an extra spacial ‘direction’ at right angles to the other three.
(So, in addition to up/down, left/right and back/forth, there’s ana/kata).
See: http://eusebeia.dyndns.org/4d/vis/01-intro
We don’t live in a ‘dimension’ we live in a three dimensional space, with time being considered to be analogous to a 4th dimension. Stating that we live in our ‘dimension’ is not really correct, it’s simply convenient shorthand for saying the ‘3 dimensional space’ we live within.
Whether beings are entering our 3D space from a space with more dimensions (= a higher dimension, in this case!) as ‘spirits’ is really a matter for pseudo-scientific speculation. It might turn out to be the case, but somehow I very much doubt it…
James Foulds, ‘The reason for this is, (in the case of a planet) the way gravity falls-off much more rapidly in 4D. Being proportional to 1/^3 rather than 1/r^2)…’
I agree, but only in macro 4D. The correction to is (apparently) G(m1m2)/(R x r^(2+α)). α is the corection factor, r is the separation of 2 masses while R is the radius of extra dimension. If R is much smaller than r as in compactification then the result is greater. If compactification were to be proven then at the quantum level we would already be composed of extra D and our 3D would be a manifestation. Ha, perhaps you are wise to keep the discussion in macro terms because it seems easier to acceopt eh?
Maybe time is a spatial dimension but as 3-D beings we only experience it as time.
LarryD: Interesting point! As I understand it, the compactification scale within 3 space is a similar order of magnitude to the Plank length?
AIUI, the plank length would be greater in 4 space, (by several orders of magnitude?) so it should follow that the compactification scale in higher dimensional space is also increased (for the remaining 9, 10 or 25 dimensions, as one of the previously compactified dimensions in 3 space in now BIG in 4 space!).
However, wouldn’t it be true to say that the scale is still sub-micro, ie: the dimensions still being many orders of magnitude smaller than any 4d subatomic particle and also so small that gravitational effect would be negligible to non-existent?
…I suppose I have also ‘conveniently’ ignored the recollection I have that ‘G’ in 4 space is quite a bit larger than in 3 space? I don’t think that changes the suggestion that ‘orbits’ (both of them!) are unstable in 4D!
You’re correct! Extending the discussion to include 4D quantum effects would be several steps too far for me!
@Mike Knight
Physicists actually know the answer to that one! Time is fundamentally different from space.
@James Foulds, ‘You’re correct! Extending the discussion to include 4D quantum effects would be several steps too far for me!’ I do apologise James, I didn’t mean to exclude your ideas from any extra D whether large or quantum. I was suggesting that you are correct in keeping to macro D because we probably have more recognition of this state (as we live in 3D) than the quantum realm.
@Mike Knight I have a different idea of time and although I have worked some equations I still have problems so it remains an idea and not a theory. The idea is that time as we use it (‘arrow of’, sequence of events, progression of change etc) is a manifestation of something more fundamental which I refer to as Component Time. In this, C.T. is mutlidimensional and I’m considering 4D C.T. where one of those is the part we recognise. However, it needs to be an evolving system and what I call ‘repeatable relative function’ as the math to describe it. The nearest analogy would be a ‘time gene’. Certain numbers appear to be constants some of which, coincidentally, are very close to what we use in space/rocket science. If such an idea was applied to macro extra D then each 3D instant might be a ‘patch’ on an expanding 4D (or 4+xD) surface. This could mean that the past still exists as ‘patch’ and that opens the flood gates doesn’t it. I have published some of these ideas but as I say they remain just ideas.
Everything is happening at once. Different aspects of ourselves do exist in other dimensions and I believe that certain energies can indeed be allowed entrance
“your insides would follow the path of least (zero) resistance and fall out.”
But regardless of whether you’re in the >4th dimension,your organs and what not are still “attached” to your body/skeleton,or would something change on the molecular/atomic/subatomic level that would cause these/the bonds to fail/change in a way that they would detach from each other?
I believe that there is only one “dimension” in our universe. This one dimension is what we experience as “space.” However, since the term space evokes so many different concepts in our minds, the more sterile term Volume is used. A one dimensional world (i.e. length only) does not exist. Nor does a two dimensional world (length and height). Additional dimensions of the 4th, 5th or higher orders have not been physically evidenced. Therefore, it is fallacious to call our universe “three dimensional” when there is only one real, true “dimension,” more properly termed “Existence” of Volume. Volume has the Euclidean characteristics of Length, Width and Depth, but none of these three dimensions can exist separately, so practically speaking, there is only one dimension.
Ex: A rock sits on the ground at latitude x, longitude y and height z and has a measurable length, width and depth, but only exists in the one dimension of volume.
All objects have volume, i.e., occupy a “space,” however small. A coalesce of these miniscule volumes allow an object to ultimately be observed. Volume may be infinitely large or small, for both positive and negative values. A Rock has positive volume; a Black Hole has negative volume. The universe is made up of infinitely small objects that each has their own volume. Therefore the universe has infinite volume.
Is paranormal activity is due to energy packets???
Your organs are attached but your blood isn’t.
Entertaining the thought that your atoms would still hold together if you were transported to 4D, your insides inc. blood would detach from you without breaking your skin? Just diffuse out into the 4th dimension I guess.
I think the speed and nature of your disintegration would depend on how you are pulled into the 4th dimension.
@Greg820
I wouldn’t put it the same way you do in terms of there being one dimension, but I agree with you. It’s nonsensical to talk about 2D beings and think of them as living on a piece of paper. Paper is 3-dimensional! Drawings on paper are also 3-dimensional!
A point is zero dimensions and since it has no measurable length, width, height, or radius, it has no mass and therefore does not exist (physically). A one-dimensional object (a line) still has no width or height (they are 0), so it’s volume is also 0, therefore it also has no mass and no reality. Same for anything 2-dimensional. It may have length and width but no height, therefore also 0 volume. None of these things can exist physically in any way that we can comprehend.
Thinking about 2-dimensional beings only leads to false conclusions because you can’t do it without giving them just enough in the 3rd dimension in order to imagine them existing at all.
Go ahead, imagine a stick figure with 0 thickness on the “paper.” (Don’t cheat, it can’t be even one atom thick). So tell me, with no atoms in your “drawing,” can you see it?
3 is the minimum for spatial dimensions. For all we know it may also be the maximum.
I like to think that zero dimensional points are the pure information that constructs our reality, and one dimensional lines are the energy strings. Two dimensional objects could be the smallest sub-atomic particles.
I’m not a physicist so I couldn’t necessarily word this correctly but just try to understand what I’m saying because it’s pure. The most basic way to understand this for me, is to think of life in 0 dimensions, 1 dimension, and 2nd dimension. Work your way backwards and realize the basic structure of the 3rd dimension is an infinite number of 2nd dimensional ‘images’. When you imagine yourself in the 2nd dimension, the basic structure consists of the 1st dimension, which is a line. Same as the 1st dimensions structure consisting of the structure of 0 dimensions, which is a dot. The structure of the 4th dimension consists of an infinite amount of 3rd dimensional images. Personally I don’t feel I will ever understand the 4th dimension since I can’t visually comprehend what it could possibly be like. In theory however, I’ve heard that in the 4th dimension. You are capable of seeing time, which means you see everything that ever has happened and anything that ever will happen. You may also be able to see through basic 3rd dimensional and see everything it consists of. Say you have a baseball. When you hold it all you can see is the outer structure of the ball, but in the 4th dimension you would be able to see everything that the structure contains. the structure of the ball is not supported well enough in the 4th dimension so all the materials the ball consists of would simply break apart and fall in to a pile of disconnected ball. Imagine trying to stand up a piece of paper without altering it by folding it and making it 3rd dimensional, it simply falls over. Such as a 3rd dimensional object in the 4th dimension.
We just don’t just live in 3 dimensions. I believe we exist in several dimensions greater than 3. It’s just not clear what are the dimensions considered to be the fourth, the fifth, the sixth, and so on. 2D is composed of 1D. 3D is composed of 2D. And 3D should part of the next higher dimension. We are living in reality where 3D is only part of our existence.
Another thing, 1D can represent length but not area, 2D can represent length and area but not volume, 3D can represent length, area and volume. One thing that 3D can’t represent is mass. Mass exists and it can’t be represented by length, width and height dimensions only. 3D can’t also represent motion and change. In reality we are in constant change and motion. I believe there are still other more dimension so this makes me think that we live in more than 3 dimensions.
I’ve always wondered something. If 3d beings can place objects in 2d space, and that 2d space beings would have no conception of how it got there or what it’s for, couldn’t we argue that a 4 dimensional “being” may have placed something in our 3d space at the beginning of the universe thus solving the mystery of how something (our universe and the big bang) came from nothing? I say this because we have no concept of how it’s even possible to make something of nothing like how 2d beings have no concept of a 3d object placed in there space, even though us as 3d beings have full understanding of how it’s possible (for example, picture your life as a dot on a piece of paper and a 3d being set down a coffee mug. What would you see? You would see nothing but a flat plane in front of you, but even though there is still something there).Could different higher level dimensions create other lower dimensions? If a 4d “object” was placed in our 3d universe it would have to have mass based on the theory of relativity, otherwise it would just be traveling at the speed of light. So assuming this object has mass it would HAVE to have energy (gravitational potential) thus making something come from nothing (from a 3d beings perspective of course). Are these “objects” from a 4d world being placed in our dimension, dark matter? Dark matter, of course, is not observable from a 3d perspective (does not absorb or reflect light) but we know it has to exist because it alters gravitational pulls in our observable universe. A final question to leave with would be… could a 4d being see dark matter as we see the very coffee cup we placed on the piece of paper?
And @Agatha, 3d space CAN repent mass. Our 3d world is made of elements. If we know the element and object is made of, we can figure out mass quite easily.
Doesn’t the 4 dimension have to do with moving in time. Would we be converted in to a timeline of ourselves?
@Andres
This question was contemplating a 4th spatial dimension rather than a temporal dimension. See the Physicist’s reply on 11.13.2014 for a link on differences between time and space.
@Ryan Minick. I don’t think 3D can represent mass. 3D specifies THREE dimensions only (such as length, width, and depth). If I will show you a cube having the length 2cm, width 2cm, and depth 2cm, you won’t know it’s mass. But if I’ll tell you that it’s density is 19.32 grams/cubic cm or the object is gold, you would know it’s mass. This is in agreement with what you said that if we know the element and what the object is made of, we would know it’s mass. But this additional information is not part of 3d specification. That’s why I can say that our world is not only 3D, we are living in a multidimensional world.
Or a uni-dimensional world
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The idea that the dimension of space exists as an integer seems ludicrous.
It’s certainly something closer to Pi, no?
Somehow shouldn’t the dimensionality of space reveal itself in the objects which occupy it?
Certainly all of the objects occupying space represent something with the dimensions of an irrational number?
I certainly want to learn the maths to express this idea (or search for it with the right terms).
Nomad (@Sheila) wrote a how to visualize a 2-D person (drawing it in a piece of paper) mouth on the side and the innards inside the outline you draw… it got me thinking…if knots can only exist in 3D can life only exist in 3-D? To Nomad’s point…that person will have to have a mouth connected to a digestive track connected to an anus…but without a 3-D basically that person then is cut in half! (no knots in 2D!) so it can’t really exist. If you close the outline for that person to really have innards then it can’t put anything inside itself…how does it then eat? unless mouth and anus are the same thing?..but even then how does it gets nutrients to its “inside”? I can’t visualize the explanation that there can’t be knots in 4-D, kind of get it conceptually (I think) but not sure…but if it works the same way…then maybe the same issue arises in 4D and higher and so again…beings can’t live in higher than 3 spatial dimensions?
I think entering the 4th dimension our body would dematerialize into an engergy of some kind as my thought of 4d is an object with in. We probably wouldn’t see any kind if 4d things because it would be at a higher frequency than what we live in. I think entering 4d or vice versa for 4d creatures would adapt simotaniousley.
The thing is this:
Q:can a 3,2,1 dimensional being be in a 4 dimensional world?
A:yes because a 3 dimensional being has 3dimensions so it can exist in a 4,5,6,7… So yhea but a 4 dimensional being cant exist in a 3 dimensional being’s world just like a 10 dimensional being cant exist in a 9th dimensional being’s world because it only has nine dimension but he can look down on other dimensions exept upwards like the 11 or twelve so the hole answer is yeas but also its kinda complicated dimension but its possibly posible that a 4 dimensional being can exist in a 3 dimensional world but its just a theory.
We live in the 1 dimension so we could enter the 2 dimension and the 3 dimension and the 4 dimension and 0 dimension too i want to know how we could enter the 2 and 3 dimension only any help
Now I am just a reader looking into this. However if it is not possible to fit a 3rd dimension object into a 4th. Then would it be possible to do this by halves? As in a 3 dimensional object inside of say the 6th dimension, and a -6 dimensional being could go inside a 3 dimensional world … Also because our eyes like a previous writer on here had said have evolved to see everything in 3d then maybe if there were other dimensions, and a being from one like the -6th dimension were to come to the 3rd dimension then we are likely not to see it? I mean think about it, if we can have a negative type of energy and a -6th dimensional cube is just the outline then couldn’t when we see figures or something like such. Like just the outline of something a figure. a negative being i believe that this could be the answer. to a lot of stuff
Ok, I’ve read everything up until this point. But, let’s just say that a 2d person could live and stand in the 3rd dimension. If you were to clap him/her/it inbetween your hands, would you just feel your hands? Or would you feel the smoothest thing ever to exist? Because it has an infinite “thinness”
Also, (I’m a catholic, so please understand this from my point of view) wouldn’t a 4d+ being be my god? Because they could have created us (theoretically, that is…)
following my previous statement (just to clarify) “my god” being a being that created the Big Bang and/or the particles that caused it
Wow, what great ideas, and explanations, which made me reflect. Could another dimension (forth) dimension be our imagination (thoughts) within our mind, and our brains, neurones, synapses occupying in the third dimensions.
I think there should be a couple of summary’s
With all the gathered information here, into one logical explanation
Wouldn’t 2-dimensional space be just as deadly to a 3-dimensional being?
Since there is no “depth” in a 2-dimensional world, wouldn’t, for example, a person’s hand be crushed to an infinite thinness as they tried to push it into a 2-dimensional world? Sort of the same effect as a 3-dimensional being entering a 4-dimensional world, but since they had no fourth-dimensional property to hold themselves together, they would spread out into an infinitely thin “film” in that 4-dimensional world. Except in the case of 2 dimensions, their hand’s depth would be “crushed” by the absolute lack of depth in the 2-dimensional world.
If that’s true, it also makes “Flatland” wrong. Any sphere or cube entering flatland would just be crushed into a line segment, wouldn’t it?
we already partially live in the 4th dimension if we didn’t there would be no change in time because that is what the 4th dimension is
Kay was right the 3 special dimensions are on the chart as we know x, y, and z. However, those lines or dimensions do not represent as she suggested time, space, and matter. They represent the first, second, and third dimensions which are width, heighth, and our dimension which is depth. Time could not be one of the first 3 dimensions because it is temperment. Time would be the 4th dimension also referred to as duration. Let us imagine we are 4th dimensional beings which means we would transcend time as we know it. You would have to imagine a person would look like a long snake, one end your conceived and given birth to, then the other end would be you’re death, passing, possibly until your molecules cease to exist. And then every version of yourself in between. Sense we are 3 dimensional beings we only see a cross sect of the 4th dimensional version. Such as you may watch a child grow to a man but never can you see him again as a child like you can in the 4th dimension. A concept truly hard to grasp. Now let us imagine this 4th dimension as a whole.. which would have started as far as we know when the big bang did. This means it would stretch all the way to how our universe ends. There is a little idea of how the 3 spacial dimensions we are familiar (somewhat) with are connected to the 4th dimension that we perceive as time.
I’d really like to hear more thoughts on the “energy cannot be destroyed” possibly explaining the existence of “spirits” (or whatever you want to call them, with this all possibly being a part of the fourth (or some higher) dimension.
How can we say a 2D object cannot exist an a world with three dimensions? Maybe they can exist here, but due to their lack of a third dimension and therefore volume we simply cannot observe them.
Perhaps it works in the same way for 3D objects in a world with four dimensions. The 3D object can exist there, but will simply be unobservable to a being living in that world with four dimensions, due to it lacking that fourth dimension.
I tend to think the concept of wormholes or the like are linked with the fourth dimension. The idea that you can take a 2D object in a 2D world and move it into the third dimension (think having a 2D picture on a page and you pull a piece of that picture off the page) and then back into the 2D world at a different location (think placing that object back on the page in a different spot), this object, to an observer in the 2D world, would appear to have ‘teleported’ (because the 2D observer cannot see what is occurring in the third dimension). This might also hold true in our three-dimensional world. An object is pulled into the fourth dimension and is then returned to the three-dimensional world in a different location. This would give to us (the observer in the three-dimensional world) the appearance that that object ‘teleported’.
might be we are surrounded by number of dimensions but our brain is not so developed yet that it could visualize beyond third……. like we can’t draw third dimension on paper even though it exist
This is one guess work subject, by looking at what we have discovered 1d, 2d and presently 3d.
Could the 4th dimension be light shadows and energy? If we were to transfer over to a 4th dimension our body would not exist but our energy, light from our energy and shadows would exist. Would gravity have effect? Not sure if time would be a factor but the ability to move freely through the dimension with no boundaries and no limits, just like how our mind wanders through our 3d brain with limited size, space and access.
The earliest conception of “modern” space-time by Minkowski in his space-time diagrams was that objects (including us) are all really examples of a four dimensional manifold, the world-lines of their particles stretching from the Big Bang to an unknown distant future. We as 4-manifolds do not experience all the events of our lives simultaneously, but as successive moments of time — successive 3-d “slices” of the 4-manifold. This is probably because causality has a speed limit — the speed of light — which essentially fragments what our consciousness can perceive into the enormous number of “frames” (3D cross sections or individual moments) of our lives. This is because of relativity of simultaneity demanded by Einstein’s Special Relativity, which makes successive moments possible.
The mystery is how our “conscious selves” at each one of these moments experiences a transition from one “frame” (3D slice) to the next. The perceived “Arrow of Time.” It is what physicist David Park called “the fallacy of the animated Minkowski diagram.” I am not a single conscious entity aware of my entire life, but something resembling a train of boxcars, with each boxcar a conscious self observing an instant at a time, with each boxcar moving forward. Some thinkers use this as an argument for consciousness being not an emergent property but rather something “outside” of the material world.
The existence of higher dimensional creatures ‘a la H.P. Lovecraft would explain certain phenomena, such as so-called poltergeist manifestations, where, for example, objects sometimes disappear from locked cupboards or safes, only to reappear after a time back there or somewhere else. It is as if some mischievous 4-d creature reaches down into our 3D world and grabs something.
I dont believe that would happen to us. Dimension, i think, are the way out eyes percieve the light and particles . Particles act as waves until observed through our 3rd dimensional eyes. Id think all dimensions co exist, we just cant see beyond that unlike we could see 2d because all we do is take away distance and a direction. If we were in a place that youd think only 4d exists, well, i think we would see it as 3d because we cannot see the 4th or higher dimension. Nor would a 2d in our world. We would see a 2d figure the same from both sides but it may not be there when we walk to the front of it, perhaps we could and it would look the same all around but he would see us as 2d. A 4d creature may see us as a 4th dimensional being, could see us as a haze or it see us for what we are since its eyes understand and can see things we cant. But to say we would die in some place where just the 4th dimension exists is kinda off in my book. I believe it all co exists and we can only see and do as our bodies and eyes allow. Very fascinating stuff.
If motion and time are dimensions (not necessarily spatial dimensions) then we live in a 5D universe 3 spatial dimensions, time and motion.