clifford_a-_pickover_surfing_through_hyperspacebookfi-org

CONCLUDING REMARKS 165
If intelligent 4-D beings evolved and we were able to communicate with
them, our correspondence could bring us a richer treasure of information than
medieval Europe inherited from ancient Greeks like Plato and Aristotle. Just
imagine the rewards of learning a 4-D being's language, music, art, mythology,
philosophy, biology, even politics. Who would be their mythical heroes? Are
their Gods more like the thundering Zeus and Yaweh or the gentler Jesus and
Baha'u'llah?
Wouldn't it be a wild world in which to live if 4-D devices were as common
as the computer and telephone? In such a world, it might be possible to manipulate
space and time to make travel to other worlds easier. Mathematicians dating
back to Georg Bernhard Riemann have studied the properties of multiply
connected spaces in which different regions of space and time are spliced
together. Physicists, who once considered this an intellectual exercise for armchair
speculation, are now seriously studying advanced branches of mathematics
to create practical models of our universe and better understand the possibilities
of parallel worlds and travel using wormholes and manipulating time.
Zen Buddhists have developed questions and statements called koans that
function as a meditative discipline. Koans ready the mind so that it can entertain
new intuitions, perceptions, and ideas. Koans cannot be answered in ordinary
ways because they are paradoxical; they function as tools for
enlightenment because they jar the mind. Similarly, the contemplation of 4-D
life is replete with koans; that is why these final paragraphs pose more questions
then they answer. These questions are koans for scientific minds.
Hyperspa.ee Survival
As our technology advances, perhaps one day the fourth dimension—and
hyperspace connections to other regions of space—will provide a refuge for
humans as their Sun dies. The Earth is like an inmate waiting on death row.
Even if we do not die from a comet or asteroid impact, we know the Earth's
days are numbered. The Earth's rotation is slowing down. Far in the future, day
lengths will be equivalent to fifty of our present days. The Moon will hang in
the same place in the sky and the lunar tides will stop.
In five billion years, the fuel in our Sun will be exhausted, and the Sun will
begin to die and expand, becoming a red giant. At some point, our oceans will
boil away. No one on Earth will be alive to see a red glow filling most of the
sky. As Freeman Dyson once said, "No matter how deep we burrow into the
Earth ... we can only postpone by a few million years our miserable end."