How to Picture the 4th Dimension and Fold Time (Videos)

Famed astronomer Carl Sagan once explained the 4th dimension by telling a story: the trip from “Flatland” to beyond!

Left: Stick man (Moodboard/Moodboard/Thinkstock) Center: Confused man (Ridofranz/iStock/Thinkstock) Right: Question mark Ingram Publishing/Thinkstock

Albert Einstein decided there must be a fourth dimension outside of the three dimensions we see. The fourth dimension is time, or spacetime, since Einstein said space and time cannot be separated.

We understand what time is from our 3-D perspective. Thus, we can see the fourth dimension the way someone in the second dimension could see us—only partially.

Famed astronomer Carl Sagan explained on his TV show “Cosmos” that a 2-D creature could see a 3-D creature as “only a plain, only a cross-section.”

Left: Cross-section of a cucumber (Eivaisla/iStock/Thinkstock) Center: Cucumbers Siraphol/iStock/Thinkstock

 

Sagan takes us from “Flatland” to the fourth dimension in the video above. In the video below, YouTube channel host Vi Hart uses a music box to conceptualize the folding of spacetime.

P. Fraundorf/Wikimedia Commons

 

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