What Does the Fourth Dimension Actually Look Like? | PODCAST: The Joy of Why

By Quanta Magazine

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We know all about how things exist in the three dimensions of length, width, and height. Physicists often talk about time as a fourth dimension, but what if there were a fourth spatial dimension — another direction entirely? How on earth would we picture that? Mathematician Maggie Miller explains why our intuition about three dimensions breaks down in four, and how she visualizes 4D spaces as a reel of three-dimensional snapshots.' “The Joy of Why” is a Quanta Magazine podcast about curiosity and the pursuit of knowledge. The mathematician and author Steven Strogatz and the cosmologist and author Janna Levin take turns interviewing leading researchers about the great scientific and mathematical questions of our time. For more episodes visit Quanta Magazine: https://www.quantamagazine.org/tag/the-joy-of-why/ -------- 0:00 Introduction: Topology and the Möbius Strip 2:47 Maggie Miller on Art and Math 5:58 Understanding Topology and Dimensions 11:00 Why Four Dimensions Defy Intuition

Tags: The Joy of Why, mathematics, math podcast, science podcast, fourth dimension, four dimensions, 4D topology, higher dimensions, knot theory, knots, knotted surfaces, Seifert surfaces, manifolds, Möbius strip, geometry, pure mathematics, mathematical visualization, topology explained, math and physics, mathematical discovery