Future Science: Hyperdimensions with Ulrike Granögger

“There could be a vestige of extra dimensions hidden in your kitchen cabinet.” ~ Lisa Randall

By Ulrike Granögger

Did you know that you are very capable of thinking in higher dimensions? Your brain is doing it right now! Mine, too.

For most people, the thought of hyperspace is frightening and complex, but for our brains it is just a way of being.

In this week’s Solari Report, we will look at various aspects of the reality of higher dimensions and how we can think about and picture them. Einstein’s breakthrough (based on the work of mathematician Bernhard Riemann) was possible because he added another dimension to our habitual 3-D perspective of space. And almost all new theories of physics employ even more dimensions in their search for symmetry and a unification of the fundamental forces.

However, we should not leave the domain of hyperdimensions to the physicists and mathematicians alone. There is “intelligence” in hyperspace that goes unnoticed if we do not claim our place in it. This starts by consciously thinking about dimensions higher than our familiar 3-D (Cartesian) coordinates. Something changes in us when we grasp at least an aspect of the next dimension. So, with this Future Science report, I hope to take us on the first steps of that journey.

We will first make an approach to visualizing or understanding some of the nature of n-dimensional spaces and put them into the context of cosmology. Then, we will look at how high-dimensional spaces are an intrinsic part of our very way of thinking. And thirdly, we will take a look at a hyperdimensional manifold called E8 and one of the new theories in physics that may offer a road to grand unification, mainly because of its high-dimensionality.

Such a report is bound to remain transitory and incomplete. The idea is not to give you a full explanation of what hyperspace and hyperdimensions are—not even the best scientists can do that. My intention is to provide some teasers and insights into how essential it is that we all learn to think in hyperspace.

For Let’s Go to the Movies, I would like to suggest seeing the film Interstellar. If you haven’t seen it, it is beautifully made Hollywood entertainment with great elements from hyperdimensional physics—it gives a good backdrop as to why we should know about the next few dimensional steps “up.”

If you don’t want to watch the whole movie, here is a great scene, which you should view in connection with this report.

Interstellar - The Watch and Closing Tesseract Full Scene

A second movie connected with this report is the brilliant documentary Hacking Reality about E8 and the work of Garrett Lisi and Klee Irwin.

Hacking Reality [Official Film]

And here is an older but still excellent video series on how to visualize higher dimensions:

Dimensions Chapter 1

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