clifford_a-_pickover_surfing_through_hyperspacebookfi-org
clifford_a-_pickover_surfing_through_hyperspacebookfi-org
clifford_a-_pickover_surfing_through_hyperspacebookfi-org
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SATAN AND PERPENDICULAR WORLDS 65<br />
"Professor Rudy Rucker of San Jose State University writes philosophically<br />
on this precise topic":<br />
Drawings use 2-D arrangements of lines to represent 3-D objects.<br />
Why shouldn't we be able to build up 3-D arrangements of neurons<br />
that represent 4-D objects? More fancifully, perhaps our minds are not<br />
just 3-D patterns: maybe our brains have a slight 4-D hyperthickness;<br />
or maybe our minds extend out of our brains and into hyperspace!<br />
You reach into your glove compartment and remove a gray, wrinkled<br />
thing stored in a formalin-filled jar to prevent decay. You give a little tap<br />
on the jar marked "Einstein." His cerebrum jiggles like a nervous mango.<br />
"Sally, the mammalian brain seeks to expand its dimension to fulfill its<br />
biological purpose. For example, the huge 2-D surface of the brain is<br />
intricately folded to fill a 3-D volume in order to increase its surface area.<br />
Wouldn't it be a great science-fiction story that describes a human whose<br />
3-D brain folds itself in the fourth dimension to increase its capacity?"<br />
(Fig. 3.9).<br />
You place the brain back into the glove compartment and withdraw a<br />
chunk of Swiss cheese filled with tunnels that interconnect various<br />
regions of the cheese.<br />
Sally pinches her nose. "No thanks."<br />
"Sally, maybe we could use other spatial dimensions for wormhole<br />
travel."<br />
"Wormholes?"<br />
You nod. "Someday, wormholes might be used for wonderful journeys.<br />
Some physicists believe that at the heart of all space, at submicroscopic<br />
size scales, there exists quantum foam. If we sufficiently magnified<br />
space, it would becomes a seething, probabilistic froth—a cosmological<br />
cheese of sorts."<br />
Sally runs her fingers <strong>through</strong> her hair. "Now, this sounds quite interesting.<br />
What do we know about the quantum froth?"<br />
Your heartbeat increases in frequency and amplitude as you gaze at<br />
her skirt, the color of cool mint. "In the froth, space doesn't have a definite<br />
structure. It has various probabilities for different shapes and curvatures.<br />
It might have a 60 percent chance of being in one shape, a 20<br />
percent chance of being in another, and a 20 percent chance of being in<br />
a third form. Because any structure is possible inside the froth, we can