dimensions and aliens

[mahatheone]

once my math teacher told us that aliens or whatever other creatures may exsist and he suggested a very intersting idea about dimensions.

as u know we're in 3D and we see what is shaped in 3D or lower, that is 2D or 1D  like drawings on a paper, but we can not see anything in 4D, 5D, and so on, so what if some creatures are in these dimensions we'll not gonna see except part of them or shadows. can anybody tells me if i'm wrong?

[paralysis]

I'd change schools!

[Diablod666]

wel... ur probs not wrong... but ur probs not right! noone knows yet, but i think it's a pretty good theory (apart from the shadows bit because then loads of people are going to say "oooh i saw a ghost, it might be that shadow of an alien in 4d or 5d blah blah blah" when GHOSTS DONT EXIST!!!!

[mahatheone]

I'm with you Diablod666 that some might say 'oooh i saw a ghost' but this is not what i'm talking about, you know they they say it anyway.

 is it possible that we can create something that allow us to see what's there in other dim. and then we may know if the theory is right or wrong

[Backdrifter]

It's a nice theory and for more on it I suggest checking out Rudy Rucker's book The Fourth Dimension And How To Get There. But I don't think, to answer your follow-up question, it can ever be done. Compare with the case of a 2D person in his 2D world - if you projected a 3D object through the plane of his world, he'd see some 2D disruption of his space but there's no way he'd be able to prise himself out of his 2 dimensions to see into the 3rd dimension and find out what was causing the disruption. Add to that the fact it's unlikely it'd even occur to him to think of doing that anyway. Similarly, moving up a dimension, how could we do the same and rear up out of our 3 dimensions to look into the 4th? I'm not sure I'd want to anyway, the shock of it might knacker our brains. Certain phenomena might for all we know be the projection into our universe of a 4th spatial dimension. Some claim that atoms are merely the 3D projection of 4D entities (aka string theory).

[Dagman]

The fourth dimension is time, so I was told as a nipper. Can't remember how it was decided, anyone know? There is some story of a line being first dimension, a square the second and a cube the third, I also recall an image of a man inside the cube to demonstrate the fourth but I can't think how!    

[Backdrifter]

Dagman, time is a dimension in terms of physics but mahatheone's original question is about spatial dimensions. In the same way that we move in 3 dimensions of space, can we ever find a way of moving in a 4th dimension of space too. It's misleading to say "time is the 4th dimension". It may well be a dimension in which it's possible to move in different ways, but in which we can only move forwards in a line, as it were, but I think it's wrong to imply that it's kind of "the next one up" from our 3 dimensions of space.

[arthurstace]

The fourth dimension is time regarded as a coordinate dimension and required by relativity theory, along with three spatial dimensions, to specify completely the location of any event.

[mahatheone]

i read your point of views, well i didn't get that the fourth dimension is time....

i found a simple definition about dimensions in this link http://tetraspace.alkaline.org/introduction.htm. but till now i couldn't find a good site talking about moving between these dim. & why we can see what's in 1, 2, and 3 dim but not what's in  4, and above. 

[robojoos]

if you looked at a higher dimensional creature, you would only see it's three dimensions. an interesting thing is if the creature moved through a higher dimension, it would seem as
if it was able to go through solid objects, so it would seem as if it was a ghost, but there are no ghosts, and i don't think you would be able to get a four dimensional creature to exist in our
universe, but then again as with the two dimensional creature finding us, you never know.
BTW
a fourth dimensional object described in shape terms would be a hypercube