THE FOURTH DIMENSION

Try “googling” the word “dimension.” You’ll come up with something, nothing or anything to paraphrase the second U.S. President, John Adams speaking on another subject. Dimensions are important constructs in cosmology, mathematics, geography, physics and so on, and each discipline defines a dimension differently. So, rather than quote a confusing definition of a dimension, let’s just say that a dimension is an environment in which we live. Our third dimension freedom allows us to travel in different directions including up and down. The more dimensions present, the more the degree of freedom we have to move about. A journey a century and a half ago from Missouri to Oregon could take many, many weeks. There were prairies to cross, mountains to climb and rivers to ford. That is what happens when you are confined to the surface of the planet. The advent of aircraft, however, gave us much more third dimension freedom which means we can travel through the air at a much greater speed than in an oxen-pulled wagon (or even an automobile.) That is freedom, and that’s what the third dimension provides us.

Two vs three dimensions

With each eye, we can only perceive two dimensions. It takes both eyes working together to experience the full stereoscopic effect of three dimensions. But, if you can imagine that our world had only two dimensions, you would see that you can only move in two directions (for example, north or south and east or west or some variation.) We have, in fact, three dimensions, not two, however, so in addition to those directions, we can also move up and down, using elevators, for example. Or helicopters. If you want to know the position of a ship on the ocean, you only need the current lattitide and longitude of the ship. If you want to know exactly where a plane is, you need those same two coordinates but also the plane’s altitude. Additionally, we experience a small part of the fourth dimension (time) because we age and we are aware of time passing. Here is how everything works together.

Our integrated reality

Let’s say you have a job interview at 20 West 34th Street in New York City, NY. You’ll need four pieces of information to make it to your appointment on time. A map will show you that the address above is between 33rd and 34th Streets and between 5th and 6th avenues. If you’re from New York City, you may recognize the address as that of the Empire State Building. The map (GPS) coordinates for that building are 40.7484° N, 73.9857° W. So, that tells you the first two of the four variables you would need. But . . .

There are 102 floors to the building. You’ll need to know which floor to go to when you arrive at the address. Now you have three dimensions. Finally, you need to know when to be there (date and time.) The date and time are fourth dimension coordinates. If you get any of the four variables wrong, you’ll miss the appointment. You’ll go to the wrong address or show up on the wrong day, or you won’t know which of the hundred or more offices you should report to. Most people handle scenarios like this everyday as they go to dental appointments or run errands to the supermarket. Most people can orient themselves within our “three-plus-one” dimensions (but some cannot, and they pay a penalty by being chronically late, getting lost and so on.)

We know that four dimensions exist. We just don’t know for sure how many additional dimensions there may be altogether. We are three dimensional beingings. We have height. We have depth. We have width (and sometimes, too much of it.) Einstein tells us that there is also a fourth dimension of which we have only a vague understanding of and marginal interaction with. The fourth dimension can be thought of as either spatial (space) or temporal (i.e., relating to time.) More accurately, think of time as the fourth dimension of space. An example of a spatial concept of the fourth dimension would be the tesseract, or a cube within a cube. You’ve heard the phrase “space-time” no doubt? In his General Relativity theory, Albert Einstein told us that these two words (space and time) are inseperatively linked together. However, Einstein, like us, was a three dimensional being with limited understanding outside of our dimension. All he could do is model and hypothesize what the fourth dimension means to us.

If you could enter or view the fourth dimension, you would see your entire life from conception to death in a series of millions or billions of individual “snapshots.” For example, these six photos represent our golden retriever Molly as a puppy running towards the camera at a certain time, on a certain day of a particular month and year. These six photos represent a total of 1.5 seconds in time. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of these images exist in the fourth dimension as a “time-line” and hopefully many more tens of thousands will soon come into existence in the future. I’ll have more on this presently.

Activity in the fourth dimension can have consequences in our third dimensional world. For example, look at the drawing of the key in the box below. Assume this is a two dimensional drawing (left-to-right and top-to-bottom) in a two-dimensional world and that the key, itself, has no thickness. If it did, this would be a three-dimensional puzzle, not a two-dimesional puzzle. How can you remove the two dimensional key from this two dimensional box without breaking (i.e., crossing the key over) a line? The answer is, you cannot in a two-dimensional world. The key is completely surrounded by lines so you cannot slide it out of the square without violating the rule to not cross a line. But from a three dimensional world perspective, you can remove it, by reaching down from above to remove the key. In other words, adding a dimension opens new and different possibilities. A two-dimensional being would discover the key to be missing, but would have no idea how it happened because it cannot not fathom what “above” means and the notion of someone being able to remove something secured by four walls.

Likewise, in our 3D world, all the gold in Fort Knox might one day missing in spite of alarms and walls and vaults and no one would be able to say how and why. We don’t know the details on how that would occur. A 4D “person” might easily walk through walls, or enter from another “direction” we can’t even imagine exists or how we might ever find the doorway! Just as a 2D person does not know what “up” means, we cannot fathom how objects or entities might enter–or exit–our world from the fourth dimension. And, according to theories in textbooks, it’s not just gold that can mysteriously disappear but egg yokes and even people!

The value of the third dimension

In ancient times when two armies faced each other of flat terrain, neither would have an advantage over the other all things being equal. However, if there were a hill overlooking the terrain on the battlefield, each army would immediately head for that hill, because the hill would provide a vantage point that level ground would not. It would give one army an advantage at the expense of the other. So, additional dimensions provide us with additional opportunities or freedom. But if we lived a two-dimensional existence, how could we understand what a three diminsional world actually is? How can a fish in the ocean have any idea of what a desert or a rain forest is? How can we understand what living as a fish is like hundreds of feet below the surface of the ocear on a dark night?

Brian Greene,the Director for Columbia University’s Center for Theoretical Physics explains it this way.

Earth as a special planet

Scientists see earth as a special planet. Everything from the distance the moon is from the earth (not to mention that we even have a moon in the first place) as well as dozens of other variables (oceans, tides, a magnetosphere, a molten core, tectonic plates, a planetary mass large enough to trap an atmosphere, an inclination to our poles and so on) are all necessary for our three dimensional lives. I also see a witness to intelligent design in the theories and discussions dealing with dimensions. Science teaches us that our planet and life on our planet evolves. I’m not sure if any mathematician or physicist would say that dimensions evolve, however and I don’t see how they would. You can say that the universe evolved based on the size of the universe since the Big Bang, the ages of the stars, etc. But dimensions are different. Yet, we have all we need for three dimensional living. We lack nothing, whether a second stomach, a third sun, or a fourth dimension.

Dr. Andreas Karch, a University of Texas at Austin professor of physics and Dr. Lisa Randall, a professor of physics at Harvard University modeled the early universe as it existed immediately after the Big Bang. Among the findings of their modeling, they discovered that:

In our world, forces such as electromagnetism only recognize three dimensions and behave according to our laws of physics, their strength diminishing with distance. Gravity, however, cuts across all dimensions, even those not recognized in our world, Karch and Randall say. But they theorize that the force of gravity is localized and, with seven branes, gravity would diminish far more quickly with distance than it does in our three-dimensional world.

With gravity diminishing rapidly with distance, a seven dimensional existence would not have planets with stable orbits around their sun, Karch said. ‘I am not precisely sure what a universe with such a short-range gravity would look like, mostly because it is always dificult to imagine how life would develop under completely different circumstances,’ he said. ‘But in any case, planetary systems as we know them wouldn’t form. The possibility of stable orbits is what makes the three-dimensional world more interesting.’”

An observer in the fourth dimension looking at us in the third dimension would see us as a snake-like creature (called a spime) and made up of billions of “selfies” of us from cradle to grave. The tail end of the “snake” is you as an embryo and the head of the snake is you are you are now. The length of our life determines the length of the spime.

As three dimensional beings, we find ourselves conveniently placed in a three dimensional existence. If we were to suddenly find ourselves in a two dimensional reality, our organs would fall out because out bodies could no longer contain them, or they might collect in a pile in the bottom of our pelvic area. If we were “thrown” into the fourth dimension, we would die almost instantaneously. That’s because atomic particles such as electrons and elements such as magnesium would likely behave or appear differently in the fourth dimension than in our existence, and we need these particles and elements in their current 3D states to survive. There would not be oxygen as we know and need it present in the fourth dimension, so we would quickly suffocate. In fact, some philosophers and theologians think of the fourth dimension as the sphere of death, itself. In other words, they believe that when a person dies, they are actually transitioning into the fourth dimension to continue their existence. That might account for reports of apparitions. It’s possible that angels or demons frequent the fourth dimension, but again, we have no way of knowing that for certain. There might be some sort of rupture in the dimensional boundary between our dimensions and the fourth dimension allowing anything from shadows or projections of images to Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena to slip through. However, Christians do not as a matter of faith believe that dead people just wander around aimlessly. There is a heaven. The is a hell. Whether they are located on different planets, alternate realities or other dimensions is uncertain.

The fourth dimension and religion

A lot of people who are involved in the occult believe the spiritual personalities that they channel or encounter normally reside in the fourth dimension. Through projection and near death experiences, they believe people can separate themselves from their body for short periods of time and travel in the fourth dimension. Assuming they are not suffering from some dissociative personality disorder, their claims are hard to evaluate, but I am personally skeptical. It was also a popular fad in the years immediately before the pandemic for young people to “shift.” By this, they meant they tried to picture themselves somewhere else as in another dimension during (for example) school. My generation called that daydreaming, and I personally did it during my freshman algebra class. It didn’t work and I received an “F” for algebra.

I’ve mentioned that physical (corporeal) creatures could not survive in the fourth dimension. What about spiritual creatures? Creatures like angels and demons. We know on the one hand that the Bible doesn’t speak about dimensions. It was never designed to be a textbook in quantum theory. We also know that while angels can appear and interact physically with people (Genesis 32:22ff.) they are normally spiritual beings as are demons. Angels don’t need doors and keys to get where they want to go. They materialize and dematerialize. Could they frequent the fourth dimension. Since they must “hang out” somewhere, then maybe it is the fourth dimension.

If there is fourth dimension “life,” such as a spirit and it visited our three dimensional world, we could not defend ourselves against it in the sense of keeping it at bay. We could lock ourselves in a cube-shaped room without windows. This might protect us from a three dimensional creature, but we would have no way of keeping out a fourth dimensional creature, partly because we don’t know enough about the fourth dimension to design a safe space or strategy against it. And if there was a fourth dimensional being next to us, all we might see is a mere slice of that being. In fact, other theorists think that talk of life in the fourth dimension is folly since all it represents for certain is time.

The fifth dimension: In for a penny, in for a pound

Let me wrap up by mentioning the fifth dimension. Author Shaun Rose writing in Quora describes the fifth dimension:

A five-dimensional being would be slightly more advanced. Not only would a hypothetical 5D being see our lives in one line, but they would also be able to see alternate life/time lines. They would see how you were born, how you will die, and all the possible things that could happen to you along the way; thus a flower in a 5D garden would be an abundance of holographic lines – all of the possible things that could happen to said flower. In short, a 5D being would see possible future events; a 4D being would only see one future.”

Think of it this way. Let’s say that one of “you” gets a full scholarship to a prestigious school and you graduate and have a successful career on Wall Street. But, what if you did not get that scholarship? That “you” might choose a career in the military instead. Obviously, your path in life as a soldier would be much different than if you were an investment broker. Or, think of it this way. There is a popular Christmas movie called “It’s A Wonderful Life” set around World War II. Jimmy Stewart plays a character named George Bailey who has big plans for his life. But he loses part of his hearing in an accident as a child and he is the oldest son in the family. Because of these two variables, he must forfeit his dreams and he becomes embittered. But, what if he were the youngest child, or there wasn’t a war? What if he didn’t lose his hearing? My parents were both born in Germany (though they did not know each other then.) My mothers parents had friends in America, and they were invited to come here and be sponsored by their friends. But my grandparents hesitated, because they also had friends in South Africa. Suppose they moved there instead? Would my future have been different? You bet.

These examples are fairly major possibilities. There are countless minor differences as well. A teenager wears her blue sweater to school one day instead of her beige sweater, and some boy she likes notices her for the first time. Tragically, her younger brother dies from cancer. But the death of her brother inspires her to choose a career in biomedicine and she develops a cure for the cancer that took her brother’s life. If she didn’t have a brother, if he didn’t have cancer, if she didn’t have the academic potential or the stanima to finish school, if someone else came up with a cure before her–all of these alternate outcomes are present in the fifth dimension as it is postulated by string theorists in the community of mathematicians and astrophysicists. So instead of one spime per person, there are endless spimes, each representing a different possibility.

With all the recent discoveries in particle physics, we may find ourselves closer to the boundaries of the fourth dimension. Perhaps engery bursts or dark photons or something are involved with the fourth dimension? That, too is a possibility.

Here is an interesting and recent article on the fourth dimension from Popular Mechanics. There may be a paywall, however.

I’ve embedded a YouTube video featuring the late Carl Sagan. As a savant, he is at once incredibly annoying but also a genius at reducing complex ideas to a kindergarten level or–as they note in Reddit–ELI5 (“Explain Like I’m 5.”)