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preface XIX shopping mall; to your family the next time you plunk down on the couch to watch The X-Files, or when you can't seem to find your keys and wonder if they have escaped your notice by temporarily retreating into the fourth dimension. Whatever you believe about the possibility of a fourth dimension, the dimensional analogies in this book raise questions about the way you see the world and will therefore shape the way you think about the universe. For example, you will become more conscious about what it means to visualize an abstract object in your mind. By the time you've finished this book, you will be able to • understand arcane concepts such as "degrees of freedom," "'hyperspheres," and "tesseracts." • impress your friends with such terms as: "enantiomorphic," "extrinsic geometry," "quaternions," "nonorientable surfaces," "Kaluza-Klein theory," and "Hinton cubes." • write better science-fiction stories for shows such as Star Trek, The X- Files, or The Outer Limits. • conduct computer experiments dealing with several aspects of the fourth dimension. • understand humanity's rather limited view of hyperspace, and how omniscient gods could reside in the fourth dimension while we are only dimly aware of their existence. • stuff a whale into a ten-dimensional sphere the size of a marble. You might even want to go out and buy a CD of the music from the X-Files TV show. Let me remind you—as I do in many of my books — that humans are a moment in astronomic time, a transient guest of the Earth. Our minds have not sufficiently evolved to comprehend all the mysteries of higher dimensions. Our brains, which evolved to make us run from predators on the African grasslands, may not permit us to understand four-dimensional beings or their thought processes. Given this potential limitation, we hope and search for knowledge and understanding. Any insights we gain as we investigate structures in higher dimensions will be increasingly useful to future scientists, theologians, philosophers, and artists. Contemplating the fourth dimension is as startling and rewarding as seeing the Earth from space for the first time. January 1999 Yorktown Heights, New York C.A.P.
The trouble with integers is that we have examined only the small ones. Maybe all the exciting stuff happens at really big numbers, ones we can't get our hand on or even begin to think about in any very definite way. So maybe all the action is really inaccessible and we're just fiddling around. Our brains have evolved to get us out of the rain, find where the berries are, and keep us from getting killed. Our brains did not evolve to help us grasp really large numbers or to look at things in a hundred thousand dimensions. —Ronald Graham, quoted in Paul Hoffman's "The man who loves only numbers" Whoever feels the touch of my hand shall become as I am, and hidden things shall be revealed to him ... I am the All, and the All came forth from me. Cleave a piece of wood and you will find me; lift up a stone and I am there. — The Gospel According to Thomas Preparing for hyperspace. It's rather unpleasantly like being drunk. —Ford Prefect in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Page 2 and 3: surfing through hyperspace
Page 4 and 5: surfing through hyperspace Understa
Page 7 and 8: This book is dedicated to Gillian A
Page 9 and 10: An unspeakable horror seized me. Th
Page 11 and 12: X contents Appendix E Four-Dimensio
Page 13 and 14: xii preface I first became excited
Page 15 and 16: XIV preface problems—from a four-
Page 17 and 18: XVI preface My soul is an entangled
Page 19: XVIII preface I've attempted to mak
Page 23 and 24: XXII introduction cal and national
Page 25 and 26: xxiv introduction snaps a few photo
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Page 30 and 31: degrees of freedom FBI Headquarters
Page 32 and 33: DEGREES OF FREEDOM 5 Figure 1.1 A f
Page 34 and 35: DEGREES OF FREEDOM 7 Figure 1.3 A f
Page 36 and 37: DEGREES OF FREEDOM -9 1800s. Howeve
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Page 52 and 53: THE DIVINITY OF HIGHER DIMENSIONS 2
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THE DIVINITY OF HIGHER DIMENSIONS 4
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satan and perpendicular worlds Wash
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SATAN AND PERPENDICULAR WORLDS 55 a
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SATAN AND PERPENDICULAR WORLDS 57 S
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SATAN AND PERPENDICULAR WORLDS 59 F
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Figure 3.5 A "hyperspace" blood tra
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SATAN AND PERPENDICULAR WORLDS 63 t
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SATAN AND PERPENDICULAR WORLDS 65 "
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SATAN AND PERPENDICULAR WORLDS 67 E
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SATAN AND PERPENDICULAR WORLDS 69 T
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SATAN AND PERPENDICULAR WORLDS 71 S
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Figure 3.13 Chess played on a Mobiu
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SATAN AND PERPENDICULAR WORLDS 79 d
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hyperspheres and tesseracts FBI Hea
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HYPERSPHERES AND TESSERACTS 83 simp
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Figure 4.2 Strange universes, (a) T
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HYPERSPHERES AND TESSERACTS 87 runn
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HYPERSPHERES AND TESSERACTS 89 Poin
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HYPERSPHERES AND TESSERACTS 91 "Sal
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Figure 4.8 The Crucifixion {Corpus
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HYPERSPHERES AND TESSERACTS 95 Figu
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HYPERSPHERES AND TESSERACTS 97 Hint
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HYPERSPHERES AND TESSERACTS 99 Next
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Figure 4.10 Slices of a hypercube a
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Figure 4.13 Embryonic 5-D cube in F
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HYPERSPHERES AND TESSERACTS 105 Fig
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HYPERSPHERES AND TESSERACTS 107 Fig
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HYPERSPHERES AND TESSERACTS 109 4-D
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Figure 4.21 Volume of a radius 2 sp
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HYPERSPHERES AND TESSERACTS 113 How
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HYPERSPHERES AND TESSERACTS 115 ans
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HYPERSPHERESANDTESSERACTS 117 Figur
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mirror worlds FBI Headquarters, Was
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MIRROR WORLDS 121 "I've designed a
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MIRROR WORLDS 123 Sally puts her he
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MIRROR WORLDS 125 Figure 5.4 A stri
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MIRROR WORLDS 127 "Me too." She pla
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MIRROR WORLDS 129 Zollner Experimen
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MIRROR WORLDS 131 not possible; per
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MIRROR WORLDS 133 Rotate Figure 5.6
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MIRROR WORLDS 135 To get a better u
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MIRROR WORLDS 137 Figure 5.9 Comput
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MIRROR WORLDS 139 Figure 5.11 A mor
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the gods of hyperspace The White Ho
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THE GODS OF HYPERSPACE 143 Sally tu
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THE GODS OF HYPERSPACE 145 "What's
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THE GODS OF HYPERSPACE 147 Figure 6
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Figure 6.2 The cross section of 4-D
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THE GODS OF HYPERSPACE 151 Figure 6
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THE GODS OF HYPERSPACE 153 You take
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THE GODS OF HYPERSPACE 155 "Let's d
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Figure 6.4 Cross-sections of higher
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THE GODS OF HYPERSPACE 159 The mana
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THE GODS OF HYPERSPACE 161 Kindling
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concluding remarks This completes o
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CONCLUDING REMARKS 165 If intellige
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CONCLUDING REMARKS 167 swered. I ho
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appendix a mind-bending four-dimens
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MIND-BENDING FOUR-DIMENSIONAL PUZZL
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Figure A.3 (right). The capture of
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appendix b higher dimensions in sci
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HIGHER DIMENSIONS IN SCIENCE FICTIO
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appendix c banchoff klein bottle It
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BANCHOFF KLEIN BOTTLE 187 Figure C.
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QUARTERNIONS 189 Figure D.I author.
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FOUR-DIMENSIONAL MAZES 191 graph. T
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SMORGASBORD FOR COMPUTER JUNKIES 19
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SMORGASBORD FOR COMPUTER JUNKIES 19
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EVOLUTION OF FOUR-DIMENSIONAL BEING
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appendix h challenging questions fo
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Figure H.2 An artist's renditions o
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CHALLENGING QUESTIONS FOR FURTHER T
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HYPERSPACE TITLES 213 tinctly diffe
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HYPERSPACE TITLES 215 meaningfully
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notes Only God truly exists; all ot
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notes 219 4. Unfortunately, there a
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notes 221 tiny discrete units. To q
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notes 223 less universes could be v
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notes 225 less mass, the universe e
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notes 227 Appendix C 1. For more in
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notes 229 Ben Brown suggests that 4
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further readings 231 Ehrenfest, P (
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about the author Clifford A. Pickov
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addendum As this book goes to press
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index 10-D universe, 15 Abbott, Edw
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Index 239 Slade, Henry, 123, 129 So
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