What a 2d room might look like

Ideas about how a world with more than three spatial dimensions would work - what laws of physics would be needed, how things would be built, how people would do things and so on.

Re: What a 2d room might look like

Postby Eric B » Mon Mar 31, 2014 1:36 am

Yes, 4D would be a totally different kind of physical existence. That's what I'm seeing from even trying to compare 2D. Again, my original point, that we cannot even imagine the infinitessimally “thin” 1D view of 2D (like seeing ahead, while being totally unconscious of left and right). It would be a totally different kind of existence.
For 4D, you would need a 3D “retina” that a volume of an image would be projected onto.

As for atoms and orbits, a 4D universe would not be using the Standard Model anyway. So whatever physics it would run on, so much else would be different anyway.
(Just in case; when I mentioned time, I wasn't confusing Minkowski spacetime with Euclidean space; I was just pointing out that in a 4D Euclidean vision, the events of time could be laid out in the new space dimension, so that you could see different times simultaneously. Just a sort of fantasy idea for the “afterlife”. I'm thinking more of places than people. And then; I imagine the 3D portion of this hyperexistence would look different, if your 3D retina would have no way to block out the extra dimension to see one 3D “slice” of time at a time).
Eric B
Trionian
 
Posts: 79
Joined: Wed Jul 20, 2005 11:46 pm
Location: NYC

Re: What a 2d room might look like

Postby ICN5D » Mon Mar 31, 2014 11:26 pm

Hmm, I wonder if highly polarized light can be considered mostly two dimensional? One that would have an extent limited to 2D, in its wave undulation. It can also rotate its polarity, and carry a momentum with it. As if a photon had mass in some strange unidentifiable way.
It is by will alone, I set my donuts in motion
ICN5D
Pentonian
 
Posts: 1135
Joined: Mon Jul 28, 2008 4:25 am
Location: the Land of Flowers

Re: What a 2d room might look like

Postby quickfur » Mon Mar 31, 2014 11:34 pm

A photon has zero rest mass. But that in no way precludes it from having relativistic mass! (In fact, moving at light speed is the requirement for a zero-rest-mass particle to carry non-zero relativistic mass.)

P.S. This has nothing to do with polarized light. All photons carry momentum, and therefore have non-zero relativistic mass.
quickfur
Pentonian
 
Posts: 2935
Joined: Thu Sep 02, 2004 11:20 pm
Location: The Great White North

Re: What a 2d room might look like

Postby ICN5D » Wed Apr 02, 2014 10:34 pm

quickfur wrote:A photon has zero rest mass. But that in no way precludes it from having relativistic mass! (In fact, moving at light speed is the requirement for a zero-rest-mass particle to carry non-zero relativistic mass.)

P.S. This has nothing to do with polarized light. All photons carry momentum, and therefore have non-zero relativistic mass.


I know, right? It's really weird that it can carry a momentum as if it had weight. It's like some backwards particle that can actually travel 670 million mph, and be weightless when sitting still. But, that makes me wonder about the experiments in condensed mater physics. We have been able to capture photons in a cloud of ultracold atoms, and release them. Not just slow them down, but stop them entirely! We can probably use this to study shorter lived exotic particles, too, like the muon. It will only exist for milliseconds, but it can travel several feet. We would have to combine a particle collider with a magnetic bottle laser cooler, and some how coax the short lived gems into a cloud. How to study the thing? I have no idea, it would be obscured by the cloud. But, perhaps its decay profile can be studied in more detail, if it's been slowed down.
It is by will alone, I set my donuts in motion
ICN5D
Pentonian
 
Posts: 1135
Joined: Mon Jul 28, 2008 4:25 am
Location: the Land of Flowers

Re: What a 2d room might look like

Postby anderscolingustafson » Fri Apr 04, 2014 4:25 am

I know the equation E2=(mc2)2+(pc)2 in which E=Energy, m=the rest mass, c=the speed of light, and p=the momentum. v=c(pc)/E so p=vE/(c2) so momentum is related to energy and velocity rather than rest mass and velocity and that's why an object with no rest mass can have momentum :nod:
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
anderscolingustafson
Tetronian
 
Posts: 316
Joined: Mon Mar 22, 2010 6:39 pm

Re: What a 2d room might look like

Postby ICN5D » Sat Apr 05, 2014 3:41 am

Well that's a nice little piece of logic there. It shows in the equation how it works. Interesting...
It is by will alone, I set my donuts in motion
ICN5D
Pentonian
 
Posts: 1135
Joined: Mon Jul 28, 2008 4:25 am
Location: the Land of Flowers

Previous

Return to Higher Spatial Dimensions

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 8 guests

cron