4d-life and 4-d planets &c.

[Batman3]

A 4d man would have 3 legs, w/feet sticking forward into a forward dimension.
A 4d-Planet could have no Van-Allen belt protection from solar radiaion since the electrons could not spiral along magnetic field lines as there would be an extra degree of freedom.
4d-rivers would not form national boundaries as they could not stop armies since the armies could go around them. Mountains mght slow them down since some ranges would put a 2d-surface in the way of an advancing army.

Would 4d-plate tectonics from 4d-geology produce different sorts of mountains than around here? Would 4d-river-ravines be harder or easier to get water from(?):would they have steeper sides than in 3d? What about the tributary system? What effect would all this have on 4d-history?
What shape would leaves and grass have to maximize solar exposure and minimize the frost effect of winter? If the 3d-solar system were formed from a rotating gas cloud, how would a 4d-solar system form? If 3d-exoplanets have elliptical orbits therefore, what about 4d-exoplanets therefore?
Any ideas?

[jinydu]

The number of dimensions a world has is not enough to infer the number of legs its beings have.

For instance, in our own 3D world, there are organisms with 0, 2, 4, 6, 8 or hundreds of legs. If you regard a stem/trunk as a "leg", trees have 1 leg.

[wendy]

What is more important is probably the gait, rather than the number of legs. For example, animals with multiple legs still run on the same oscillator sequences as animals with two or four legs.

In practice, biological realms of the same group tend to drive other groups out: in animals, the pentaforms drove out the earlier pre-cambrian forms out [see Gould: the Burgess Shales].

I usually model four legs per section for animals in four dimensions. Even so, the gait on later sections tend to follow the leading gate, but out of phase with it (but not always: trot and pronk have identical phasing in each gate, and cockroaches have a three-stage gate).

[PWrong]

The last time someone asked this question, we worked out that a stool needs at least 4 legs, assuming the legs are thin, and don't lie in the same plane.

The important thing is that the center of mass is above the base. For a stool in 3D, the base is the polygon with the legs as vertices. In 4D, the base must be some kind of polyhedron.

Animals are different of course, because they have bilateral symmetry and they move. Even though a 3D stool only needs 3 legs, I can't think of any animal with an odd number of legs. I think 4D animals will have a multiple of 3 legs, although I'm not sure.

A 4d-Planet could have no Van-Allen belt protection from solar radiaion since the electrons could not spiral along magnetic field lines as there would be an extra degree of freedom.

Well at the moment we don't know how either magnetism or electrons work in 4D, until we finish extending Maxwell's equations and solving the 4D Schrodinger's equation. I wouldn't be surprised if even atoms aren't stable.

4d-rivers would not form national boundaries as they could not stop armies since the armies could go around them.

There are several kinds of bodies of water in 4D, as described somewhere in the main site. But you're right, rivers don't pose a barrier in 4D.

Would 4d-plate tectonics from 4d-geology produce different sorts of mountains than around here?

Assuming we have a glomar planet, the surface is 3D. This surface would break up into 3-dimensional "plates". If one plate hit another, the intersection would be 2D. So an earthquake would have a "faultplane" not a "faultline". Eventually these would result in a planar mountain range.

What shape would leaves and grass have to maximize solar exposure and minimize the frost effect of winter?

No idea. They'd probably be realmar. Leaves tend to come in lots of different shapes anyway.

If the 3d-solar system were formed from a rotating gas cloud, how would a 4d-solar system form? If 3d-exoplanets have elliptical orbits therefore, what about 4d-exoplanets therefore?

Unfortunately, most 4D planets will either spiral into the sun or away from the solar system. 3D planets follow three kinds of path (all quadratics): parabolic, elliptical, and hyperbolic. I have a feeling that 4D planets follow cubic equations.

I wrote a program to simulate 4D gravity, and it doesn't look too good. If you start off in the right place, you can get a nice orbit. But if you start from too far away, or too close, it's almost impossible to get it right.

[wendy]

The first approximation of the earth's magnetic field is a magnetic dipole, such as might arise from a rotating charged sphere. This is the model that produces the "van allen belt".

A rotating charged sphere in four dimensions, especially doing the clifford thing, could produce something akin to the van allen belt. The field would be fibulated, but otherwise spherical: ie something like the complex hedroid CE2 (ie perpendicular argand diagrams).

What one might need to capture charged particles in the van allen belt would be some kind of potential valley, ie the effect of a large inverse-cube law, and some higher inverse-law to effect repulsion.

It could be that we *could* achieve stable orbits, etc if we propose the nature of such a force: after all, electrons do not spiral into the nucleus. I still don't have a model for it as yet, but something like a radiant inverse biquadral force would do it nicely.

TERMS

The PG divides words into multiplicative (ie referenced to 0d, or fixed in dimension), and division (ie relative to all-space). A margin is N-2, while a plate is N-1. Margin takes over the sense of line as division: eg dead-line becomes dead-margin. On the other hand, line as connection is still line, eg linear.

A hedrix is a 2d cloth. A latrix is a 1d cloth. A margin is a N-2 d cloth, as dividing faces or plates (N-1). [as a polytope, the tectonic plates are faces of the earth].

TECTONICS

Plate tectonics are partly caused by the moon. This could still happen in four dimensions, the use of "line" here is in its meaning i assign to "margin", or boundary. The words like "line in a sand", "deadline" are instance where line is a division or boundary, rather than a bridge or connection, like in "bus-line", "time-line", "linearage".

None the same, a fault-latrix (line) is possible, in much the same way that our earthquakes have "epicentres" (points). Earthquakes in 3d don't happen all along the fault-margin, but at stripes (points) across the margin, where there is a local creep. To achieve this in 4d, the creep would happen on a long latrix (strip) along the tectonic margin.

ANIMALS

Animal legs might be thought of as being attached to oscillators, and are usually placed so that each segment is symmetrically loaded. This reduces the walking load. The segments exist in the across-space (ie perpendicular to height and forward), so we might suppose that this is in the across-hedrix in 4d.

Of course, we are not restricted to a power of two here. All we really need is some polytope whose vertices are equally spaced in the across-space. So a triangle would work here, and one could have three-fold symmetry of the legs. Because of the oscillators, the legs would be typically 1/x out of phase with each other. Three sounds a little more efficient, but one could have 1/4 or 2/5 as the gait-state between adjacent legs, if one has 4 or 5 legs per sector.

What is more likely to happen is that if one proposes x legs per segment for animals, then one would expect all animals to have this partition. Of the mammals, we see pretty much bone for bone an identification, so if your chosen animal has 15 legs, (three segments of 5), then you might have humans with 5 arms and 10 legs, or something.

The number of eyes would match the number of legs per segment, so if animals have five legs per segment, they have also five eyes. This is more a fait of biological historology, rather than geometric analysis.

When you see animals walk, they tend to waddle, or move side to side. Usually for multi-segment animals, the oscillators are out of phase (so that the waddling is removed), but animals with just one walking segment (eg humans, birds), the waddling is more pronounced.

If one supposes three or four legs, the waddling would not be a rocking from side to side, but a spiral down the cylinder that is formed by the circle around the body, and the forward direction. A 2/5 gait would greatly reduce this.

Note that different gaits exist (walk, amble, run, trot, pronk), one basically moves from gait to gait as the speed goes up. One could for a five-legged animal have several kinds of 1/5 and 2/5 gaits. Such is not unknown in the cockroaches, where the relative phasing of the segment-oscillators can alter.

W

[jinydu]

I wrote a program to simulate 4D gravity, and it doesn't look too good. If you start off in the right place, you can get a nice orbit. But if you start from too far away, or too close, it's almost impossible to get it right.

Could you elaborate on that please?

[PWrong]

I mentioned it in another thread. I used Blitz Basic, but it shouldn't be hard to write in any language.

If you start off in an orbit close to a circle, it seems to spiral in and out repeatedly. It looks like there's a maximum and minumum radius. But most of the time planets will either spiral in all the way or miss completely.

Here's some pseudocode, in case anyone wants to try it. This simulates a planet orbiting a stationary sun, given an initial position and velocity.

variables:
G, M, m
x, y, x', y'
power = 3
t = 0
dt = (very small)

While
t = t + dt

r = sqrt(x^2 + y^2)
force = GMm / r^power
x'' = x'' - force * x / r
y'' = x'' - force * y / r

x' = x' + x'' * dt
y' = y' + y'' * dt

x = x + x' *dt
y = y + y' *dt
End

[Batman3]

I once drew a 'photograph' of a 4d sunset on a piece of 2d paper. The photograph was of course 3d, just like ours are 2d. So I had to just draw a cube on the 2d paper, fill in the colors with crayon, and imagine in my mind what a 4d person would see.
Lower in the cube than the horzon was naturally a field of grass startng from the horizon plane and extending down to the bottom plane with the grass getting 'higher' all the time. The 4d-sun would be a yellow solid hemisphere just sticking over the horizon. It would descend beneath the horizon with the passage of time. Around the hemi-sun were orange and red coulds and white clouds further out and then blue sky.
There was a stream running though the grass as a smooshed solid blue cylinder from one side of the cube to the other with ellipses at the ends to show it was leaving(entering) the photo, but I didn't think of drawing a ravine, even if I had known how. BTW wht would 4d-ravines be like?

Since I am right( ) about the Van Allen belts not deflecting electrons, the 4d-earth could have no such protection from solar radiation. The atmosphere would have to deal with that. Also since there could be no electron-magnetic field interaction, solar flares and umbrae and penumbrae would not appear on the surface of a star. A star's structure would be more like a very, very hot Jupiter, wth convection currents and hurricanes like the Great Red Spot and fast winds.

I don't see that internal-atomic structure as descibed by QuantumMechanics has any bearing on Van Allen belts(apart fom the fact the the ions are ionized atoms) because QM only describes small structures of atoms. At large scales QM only claims to be an approximation.

[jinydu]

According to my Chemistry professor, quantum mechancs is still valid at macroscopic scales; in fact, it is more accurate than classical mechanics. However, it is rarely used because the calculations tend to be more complicated and on macroscopic scales, the gain in accuracy is usually negligible.

[wendy]

While it is true that quantum mechanics is still valid at macroscopic scales, and that even our speed/momentum is quantised (ie has integer values, to h), the integer values in the order of 10^24 look pretty much like a continium.

[Hugh]

What if we're actually 4d life ourselves, living on a 4d planet, but only able to see a limited 3d slice of it at any one time? We've built up our scientific knowledge and mathematical formulas thinking that we're only 3d, because that's what we see around us. What if we're wrong?

In another thread I talked about how Michio Kaku shows that by bringing in higher dimensions, that the forces such as gravity and light can be united into the same thing; a vibration in higher dimensional space.

[thigle]

hugh, in support of your view that we are habituated to restricted field of experience, this is from http://deoxy.org/t_model.htm

The Geometric Model
Terence McKenna, Imagination In The Light Of Nature

I've come to what I call the "geometric model of the psychedelic experience." I certainly don't represent it as the end of the intellectual road, but it is a provisional model which is the best I can do at the moment. I think that, and it seems logically compelling to me, that consciousness as ordinarily experienced is a human ability shaped by evolutionary pressure, and since evolutionary threat and harm usually comes at us in three dimensional space, this is where consciousness has been forced ... to concentrate and define itself.

Let me restate it. Because of the possibility of being stepped on by woolly mammoths and eaten by sabre-tooth tigers, the primitive evolving mind of human beings concentrated on nearby space and time because that's where threat comes from, the kind of threat that has to be immediately responded to by running away or fighting or something like that. But ... if the psychedelics prove anything they prove that consciousness is an incredibly plastic and malleable medium. So what happens, when you take a compound like psilocybin in silent darkness, in a situation of no threat and low anxiety and low input from the exterior world is that this function, which is essentially in most situations a closed fist ready to strike out at something coming from nearby, unfolds into something much more beautiful, much more interesting, and much more true to itself. In other words, not defined by an exterior context or situation, but defined by its own mechanics.

[Hugh]

Hi thigle,

Although the link provides many interesting thoughts, the main idea seems to be the use of psychedelics and hallucinogens to see the higher dimensions .

I think that if we're 4d, there would be a natural ability to see the effects of that, without using such harmful methods.

[thigle]

well, that seems to be his point. i do not advocate any such use, nor do i not. but consider that:

though there are people who are skilled in geometry, math, or some other formalism, which allows them to build their multidimensional skills step by step, massive majority of people on earth are not consciously at the level of formal understanding needed to proceed beyond 3d perception. these 'ordinary' people have no direct means to come into contact with their multidimensional nature, other than through mediated contact via public-media expressions from those few who do (like in movies, scientific visualisations, or web-applets, or art-instalations, or textual data).

so taking a hit of LSD, or psylocybe mushrooms, and as a consequence, abiding non-conceptually, in not just 4d but in nD visions for few hours, experiencing the dynamics of higher space in fully immersive milieu of one own mind, brings one into a knowledge of limits of 3d consciousness-habit. it surely doesn't permanently abolish it, (that isn't the goal anyway). nor does it make it easier for one to disrupt his ordinary state of consciousness permanently, and allow wider field (4 or more d) of experience as content of consciousness as clarity of mind. the cause for these are as you say natural, and as such neither induced, nor conditioned by psychedelics.
however, consider, how even from those few people on earth who do grow an interest in nD matters and spaces, only few do claim an ability to see multidimensionally, and even then often only of objects, not spaces-as-such, so some can see many 4d objects for ex. check out the rotachora thread. to truly perceive the pre-objective multidimensionality of existence as such, it is not easy. it is not impossible as it is our nature, but it really is buried deep under and within and over(=through?) the textures of our habits.

psychedelics are not inherently harmful methods, no more than math. nothing is. there are no poisons in any objects of consciousness. the way of our grasping of things - the methodics of our actions, therein lies the cause of our erring. psychedelics can make you see, but just for the time of their action. if you go mad or become enlightenment, during or afterwards their action, that's a question of wisdom and stability of right approach.

surely, the poison path was and is not chosen by many. not only because of its own perils, but for society's fanatic persecution too.
but it's everyone's path: as paracelsus said, all is poison, nothing is poison.

"so please stop focusing on this crazy multidimensional stuff and finally find a real job for a real life!"

[Hugh]

Hi thigle,

all is poison, nothing is poison.

, it's the dosage that makes it so. That is true, but why risk your life with something that can kill you with dosages measured in grams?

"so please stop focusing on this crazy multidimensional stuff and finally find a real job for a real life!"

Hey, we're all just here talking about 4d stuff & having fun aren't we?

[thigle]

no killing here ! that's how 'drugs' have been culturally demonized ! i thought we were talking specifically about psychedelics (=psylocibe mushrooms, LSD, DMT, ...). No heavy drugs and none addictive ! (like heroin, crack, speeds, chemicals sniffed, ...) we should stop confusing people who want to freely explore their consciousness - the basic freedom we have, from people who are mentally and then soon even physically ill, and unable to handle their own fates. but this is perhaps not a forum to discuss these matters.

lets refocus back on matters multidimensional in their nature, the specific of which is for this thread 4d life & planets. I think that it is confusing and potentionally misleading to identify 'life' (and potentially also 'planets') with matter, or matter mechanics simply. although some might argue for conscious existence of the planet, no one will argue for consciousness of humans (and though some might go so far as to deny it to animals, others attribute it to plant world as well. ) this consciousness is proto-causal, and matter & time is not existing apart from in interaction with consciousness. in other words, matter is not causing emergence of consciousness. consciousness is life, which is self-organizational coherence that allows local & situational negative-entropy. information is not energy !
consciousness is organizing the actual 'stuff' of the universe in perception, and via patterning it by its own perceptive reflexivity, it seems to itself to be as its objects. but reflexivity of mirror is never tainted by the reflections, anyhow may they be.

i think a good attempt at multidimensional modeling of consciousness, in terms of multidimensional geometry, is the old model of Sirag, some of it at:
http://www.williamjames.com/Theory/Consciousness.pdf
http://www.stardrive.org/Jack/hyperspace1.pdf
http://www.williamjames.com/sirag.htm

then tony smith on clifford structures of consciousness:
http://www.valdostamuseum.org/hamsmith/QuanCon3.html#DNstructure
http://www.valdostamuseum.org/hamsmith/QuanCon2.html#clifford

then these, less academic,
http://www.rialian.com/rnboyd/life.htm
http://www.rialian.com/rnboyd/p-consciousness.htm
http://www.zynet.co.uk/imprint/Tucson/4.htm
http://www.zynet.co.uk/imprint/Tucson/4.htm#Physical
Edit by iNVERTED: fixed links

also, on this life question, please those who know something of quantum mechanics, note this, 'Physics of the Biofield': (this guy applied Maxwell’s equations on electromagnetic radiation to the biofields of living cells.
http://www.auracom.com/davidlapierre/Physical%20Model%20Biofield.pdf
and his other papers

also, further down this thread, PWrong notes that:

Well at the moment we don't know how either magnetism or electrons work in 4D, until we finish extending Maxwell's equations and solving the 4D Schrodinger's equation

i always thought that maxwell formulated his e-m dynamics in terms of quaternion algebra, therefore they are naturally 4d dynamics, as quaternions are natural algebra of 4-space. is it that because of using vector-calculus formalism instead of geometric algebras that understanding of Maxwell's equations as inherently 4d is genereally absent ? are you using vector calculus ?

[PWrong]

i always thought that maxwell formulated his e-m dynamics in terms of quaternion algebra, therefore they are naturally 4d dynamics, as quaternions are natural algebra of 4-space. is it that because of using vector-calculus formalism instead of geometric algebras that understanding of Maxwell's equations as inherently 4d is genereally absent ? are you using vector calculus ?

Maxwell used vector calculus to write his equations (in fact, I think he helped invent a lot of vector calculus). I don't think quaternions were invented back then. There are lots of ways to write Maxwell's equations, and a lot of them use 4D concepts. For instance, relativity counts time as a kind of dimension, so the relativistic version of Maxwell's equations uses 4-vectors and an electromagnetic tensor.

But they all describe the same thing, which is a pair of fields existing in 3 spatial dimensions and 1 time dimension. What we want to do is find a similar set of equations that describes the electromagnetic fields that might exist in a 4D universe.

Unfortunately, vector calculus is the only formalism I know so far (and I'm mostly self-taught in that, I've only done single variable calc at uni). There is another form, where you have a vector potential field and a scalar field, and I'm getting close to understanding that. That form might be easier to extend to 4D.

[thigle]

tony at: http://www.valdostamuseum.org/hamsmith/QOphys.html states that:

quats were invented by Hamilton when Maxwell was 12 years old. maxwell formulated his EM dynamics in complex numbers and vectors. however, he was much fond of quats, and corresponded heavily about them with many bright minds of his times. (he even got octonions during his life). quats were overtaken only later by then more-successful vector calculus. maxwell himself wrote:

... The invention of the Calculus of Quaternions by Hamilton is a step towards the knowledge of quantities related to space which can only be compared for its importance with the invention of triple coordinates by Descartes. The limited use which has up to the present time been made of Quaternions must be attributed partly to the repugnance of most mature minds to new methods involving the expenditure of thought ...".

also, he wrote "Manuscript on the Application of Quaternions to Electromagnetism", which is reprinted in Volume II of Maxwell's Scientific Papers at pages 570-576.

also, related to quitessence issue in other thread, tony writes: "Maxwell's consideration of a compressible general elastic Aether medium anticipated the Higgs mechanism and Torsion Physics." so 5th element/force is the Higgs field ?

[otheronenorehto]

What if we're actually 4d life ourselves, living on a 4d planet, but only able to see a limited 3d slice of it at any one time? We've built up our scientific knowledge and mathematical formulas thinking that we're only 3d, because that's what we see around us. What if we're wrong?

In another thread I talked about how Michio Kaku shows that by bringing in higher dimensions, that the forces such as gravity and light can be united into the same thing; a vibration in higher dimensional space.

This in a way is what I believe we experience 4D existence, it is time. What we percieve as time is actually the geometry of the fourth dimension. I don't believe that it is practical (although very entertaining!) to wonder about how many legs a four dimensional creature would have. Our universe is a 4 dimensional object all the time that will ever happen is part of that object. If there are only 4 dimensions on any plane of existence then the entirety of time is the end of what can exist.

An insteresting though is if this universe curves into a 5th dimension that would mean in my point of view that not only everything that did happen and will happen exists in the structure of our 4-D universe but also everything that could posibly exist does exist but only as our universe extends into the 5th dimension. (multiple universe theory anyone?).

[otheronenorehto]

Reading about the higgs field... I think I can relate it to the idea that space and time are "space filling curves" or Peano curves. There are two parts to the peano curve the space it fills and the way that it fills the space. I believe that the higs field could be thought of as part of the way that three dimensionall space is mapped into a 4th dimension (note there could be multiple parts to that equation: ) In that models the 4d space that 3d space filling curve fill is the entirety of time for our universe.

The way 4d space curves into 5d space (equation) I think will be the key to any sort of a "universal equation" because knowing that we can know why our universe is the way it is. The answer is because it exists in a certain region of 5-D space. %-d Space as I mentioned above is al of what happens curving into all of what could happen but doesn't.

Some of you may be thinking that this is just explaining every level of existence by having an aditional meta level to explain it but it is not beyond 5-D there is no need to calculate any more since we have already described everything in our universe with the 5D equation.

Also by the way because peano curves lead to fractal structure I am not sure that having an equation is as meaningful as some people make it out to be. It deos not mean we have gain omnipitence. It merely means we have gained the means to know anything we have the power to calculate... and out calculating power is very limited...

[thigle]

space & time are endophysical constructs. our 4dimensional spacetime RP1xS3 appears differently to us than to dolphins or ants. our whole reasoning is built on assumption of giveness of our epistemological situation as empirically determined.
i partly agree that what we perceive as time is the unfolding of geometry of the fourth dimension. but not only. "if there are only 4 dimensions to any plane of existence" doesn't hold. more than infinity of planes of freedom float. "entirety of time is the end of what can exist" doesn't hold either. there are things beyond existence (or non-existence).

entering physicality, you enter 4dimensional realm within. perceptually, the closest finer structure of spacetime is 4dimensional milieu of 2 4d halfspaces of structure & process. then flowing superconductivelly by lessening inner viscosity way under zero, when you'rre at light speed, you can claim embodiment of light-body - a full consciousness of your 'dream-body', aristotle's entelechia, the lightbody of information, soulight. but the space of that body is 5d.

how many bodies can we embody ?

soul draws in the space of spirit.

meta-levels run out. after 4 steps, nothing stays to grasp onto.

[thigle]

...and we dance groundless through all these spaces... http://www.valdostamuseum.org/hamsmith/allspaces.html

[PWrong]

tony at: http://www.valdostamuseum.org/hamsmith/QOphys.html states that:

quats were invented by Hamilton when Maxwell was 12 years old. maxwell formulated his EM dynamics in complex numbers and vectors. however, he was much fond of quats, and corresponded heavily about them with many bright minds of his times. (he even got octonions during his life). quats were overtaken only later by then more-successful vector calculus. maxwell himself wrote:

Sorry, you're right, they were invented back then. Although I wouldn't trust that Tony Smith guy. I can't work out what he's going on about. Anyway, quaternions wouldn't be much use for electromagnetism in 4D space. I'm not sure how it works, but I think that three components decribe the vector potential field, and the other component is the scalar field. If that's the case, quaternions would be useless for 4D electromagnetism, because we need five numbers.

also, related to quitessence issue in other thread, tony writes: "Maxwell's consideration of a compressible general elastic Aether medium anticipated the Higgs mechanism and Torsion Physics." so 5th element/force is the Higgs field ?

Nope, the Higgs field is much more interesting than aether, not least because the aether doesn't exist. The Higgs field gives objects their mass. The interesting thing about it is that it exists even when it doesn't . More specifically, when the amount of field is zero, it still has positive potential energy. It's possible to have zero energy, but only if the Higgs field is non-zero. So you could argue that the Higg's field doesn't even require space and time, and it may have existed "before" the big bang (In a manner of speaking. What I've said is meaningless, but it's hard to explain this stuff). Apparently the big bang was caused by quantum fluctuations in the field.

when you'rre at light speed, you can claim embodiment of light-body - a full consciousness of your 'dream-body'

You can claim that, but noone will hear you, because of the doppler effect. Furthermore, your "light-body" is also travelling at light speed, so it won't notice how fast you're going with respect to us. As far as you're concerned, you're as unconscious of your dream body as ever.

[otheronenorehto]

space & time are endophysical constructs. our 4dimensional spacetime RP1xS3 appears differently to us than to dolphins or ants. our whole reasoning is built on assumption of giveness of our epistemological situation as empirically determined.
i partly agree that what we perceive as time is the unfolding of geometry of the fourth dimension. but not only. "if there are only 4 dimensions to any plane of existence" doesn't hold. more than infinity of planes of freedom float. "entirety of time is the end of what can exist" doesn't hold either. there are things beyond existence (or non-existence).

entering physicality, you enter 4dimensional realm within. perceptually, the closest finer structure of spacetime is 4dimensional milieu of 2 4d halfspaces of structure & process. then flowing superconductivelly by lessening inner viscosity way under zero, when you'rre at light speed, you can claim embodiment of light-body - a full consciousness of your 'dream-body', aristotle's entelechia, the lightbody of information, soulight. but the space of that body is 5d.

how many bodies can we embody ?

soul draws in the space of spirit.

meta-levels run out. after 4 steps, nothing stays to grasp onto.

Thank you for responding to my post! I have to admit that I typed that after working for 12 hours and half my mind was on the drive home. Also I would like to thank anyone who has responded to my posts so far on this forum for not jumping on my sometimes poor typing and or grammar! I consider that to be a sign of maturity in a forum. I am a great fan of tollerance:)

I was thinking more about this later that night. I can't stop obsessing about fractal structures and how it might be related to our universe. I really like the meatphor of a peano curve for describing the expansion of one dimension into the next.

This forum got me specifically thinking about perspective and what kind of perspective you could have in any given dimension. It seams to me that a single point can not have a perspective. In a group of points defining a 1 dimensional space any one point can have the perspective of the points adjacent to that point or set.

In a curved linear space especially say that of the peano type curve, the perspective is expanded because not adjacent points are brought within the proximity of each other.

Similarly if the peano curve fills a volume the numbe of adjactent points grows.

Curving that volume into the fourth dimension allows for the progression of volumes that evolve from one self similar state to the next. This is what we percieve as time. The reason that we can remember the past and predict the future is because of the way we are curved into the fourth dimension. Just like the point on the plane filling peano curve can have a perspective of a non adjacent point on the line so can we thre dimensional volumes have perspective of past and future volumes.

But we have more than that don't we? We can imagine things that exist and don't esist too. So the fourth dimension while it is the entirety of time only embodies all that did and will happen (that is from our perspective in a 4 d object all times/states exist at once).

In my personal view that I am evolving as we speak really. I know some of you will even think it is limited. In that view I concieve of the curving of 4 dimensional space into 5 dimensions is the extension of every thing that will exist r did exist into anything that could possibly exist (or not exist?) Because of the way 4D curves into 5D we can have perspective of things that dont exist. The things that we imagine that don't exist are our very rough pereption of part of the fifth dimension that curve close to our place or cross section or point (however you want to describe the part of 5D that we reside in : ).

I am still trying to incorperate other ideas into this view point and eventually I will be able to incorperate everything or run into a road block and have to revise my premis.

[Batman3]

What about clouds in 4d? In 3d they have a whole range a fractal dimensions, even within a single cloud. (look at cunulus clouds).

[darthbadass]

tony at: http://www.valdostamuseum.org/hamsmith/QOphys.html states that:

quats were invented by Hamilton when Maxwell was 12 years old. maxwell formulated his EM dynamics in complex numbers and vectors. however, he was much fond of quats, and corresponded heavily about them with many bright minds of his times. (he even got octonions during his life). quats were overtaken only later by then more-successful vector calculus. maxwell himself wrote:

... The invention of the Calculus of Quaternions by Hamilton is a step towards the knowledge of quantities related to space which can only be compared for its importance with the invention of triple coordinates by Descartes. The limited use which has up to the present time been made of Quaternions must be attributed partly to the repugnance of most mature minds to new methods involving the expenditure of thought ...".

also, he wrote "Manuscript on the Application of Quaternions to Electromagnetism", which is reprinted in Volume II of Maxwell's Scientific Papers at pages 570-576.

also, related to quitessence issue in other thread, tony writes: "Maxwell's consideration of a compressible general elastic Aether medium anticipated the Higgs mechanism and Torsion Physics." so 5th element/force is the Higgs field ?

What the hell's a quaternion?

[moonlord]

See a previous thread, "Quaternions & co."

[houserichichi]

Quaternion: A four dimensional extension of the complex numbers.

[Rkyeun]

The science-fiction book "Diaspora" by Greg Egan covers this topic in some detail in one of its later chapters. I suggest it for a good read.