There is no "Fourth" dimension

I'd like to clear up a misconception: there is no fourth dimension. As a matter of fact, there is no third dimension, either. Now, by that I don't mean that there aren't three dimensions… there are, but just we can't tell these dimensions apart: there's no special direction you can call "the 1st dimension," [north? east? up?] so it doesn't make sense to say "this is the 2nd one," or "what's the fourth one?" It's like if you have a jug with three cups of water in it... it's easy to tell that there ARE three cups of water, but which is the first cup? the second? or the third? Those questions don't even make sense! That said, there may be different KINDS of dimensions that you CAN tell apart - like if you poured three cups of water and one cup of oil into our dimensions jug. Then you could say "I have three dimensions that behave in the same way, and one that behaves a different way." And that's what we mean when we say that we live in three spatial dimensions and one time dimension. And there's nothing crazy about adding another cup of water so that you'd have four watery cups and one oily cup; likewise we can contemplate what the universe would be like if there were FOUR spatial dimensions and one time dimension… or in the case of string theory, nine spatial dimensions and one time dimension. And while we're at it, it's not even too hard to conceive that there might be two dimensions of time… but I don't have even have enough of one time dimension to explain that now. So if you'd like to try your brain at visualizing a world with four spatial dimensions, check out the book Flatland or try solving a 4D rubiks cube.

Channel: minutephysics

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Keywords: four, fourth, ten, tenth, third, dimension, string, theory, light, year, humpback, whale, distance, E=mc2, equals, mc, squared, albert, einstein, special, relativity, lorentz, time, dilation, travel, simultaneity, brownian, motion, pi day, quantum, speed, wave, particle, duality, black hole, standard model, rocket, science, Tides, gravity, moon, Neutrino, photon, cern, lhc, higgs, electron, atomic, nuclear, General, Dark, energy, Minutephysics, minute, physics, Henry, Reich, universe, xkcd, cat, schrodinger

Id: M9sbdrPVfOQ

Length: 2min 2sec (122 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 14 2012