clifford_a-_pickover_surfing_through_hyperspacebookfi-org

XVI
preface
My soul is an entangled knot
Upon a liquid vortex wrought
The secret of its untying
In four-dimensional space is lying.
I call such four-dimensional beings "Gods." If we ever encounter beings
that can move in a fourth spatial dimension, we would find that they can perform
levitation, bloodless surgery, disappear in front of our eyes, walk through
walls. ... It would be very difficult to hide from them no matter where we
went. Objects locked in safes would be easy for them to retrieve. If such a
being were observed in biblical times, it would be considered a God with many
characteristics of omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence.
A Note on Terminology
Most Earthly cultures have a vocabulary with words like up, down, right, left,
north, south, and so forth. Although the terms "up" and "down" have meaning
for us in our three-dimensional universe, they are less useful when talking about
movements from the three-dimensional universe into the fourth dimension. To
facilitate our discussions, I use the words "upsilon" and "delta," denoted by the
Greek letters Y and A. These words can be used more or less like the words up
and down, as you will see when first introduced to the terms in Chapter 3.
The term "hyperspace" is popularly used when referring to higher dimensions,
and hyper- is the correct scientific prefix for higher-dimensional geometries.
Like other authors, I have adhered to the custom of using hyperspace
when referring to higher dimensions. The word "hyperspace" was coined by
John W. Campbell in his short story "The Mightiest Machine" (1934), and
the term has been used both by science-fiction writers and physicists ever
since. Moreover, physicists sometimes use hyperspace in discussions of the
structure of our universe. For example, if we cannot move faster than light in
this universe, perhaps we can take a shortcut. Astrophysicists sometimes speculate
that there may be a way to slip out of ordinary space and return to our
own universe at some other location via a crumpling of space. This severe
folding takes place in hyperspace so that two seemingly faraway points are
brought closer together. Some physicists also view hyperspace as a higher
dimension in which our entire universe may be curved—in the same way that
a flat piece of paper can be flexed or rolled so that it curves in the third
dimension.