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