Ghosts, Portals, and Hypercubes: A Hypothesis on the Fourth Dimension
Going by Einstein’s theories, we of Nexus Prime, Earth, exist in what is called the space-time continuum. Einstein basically stated that there are four dimensions (not Multiversal Dimensions) to our Universe: three spatial and one temporal. I’m sure you all know that 3-D means that an object has length, width, and depth. Those are the three spatial dimensions, and the temporal one is, obviously, the flow of time.
Some branches of Physics have considered the possibility of there being more than three spatial dimensions. You can have things that are simply 2 dimensional, like polygons, so why couldn’t there be a dimension of space beyond the third? Ignoring Time, this dimension is usually labeled as the Fourth Dimension. It directions are called lambda and upsilon, if I recall correctly.
“Impossible,” you may say, “If there’s a Fourth Dimension, then we could see it.” Not really. Imagine you live in a 2-D world, as a figure on a sheet of paper. All you know is Left-Right and Forward-Back; you have no concept whatsoever of Up-Down. Now, imagine some random Square comes up and says “I’m going up to the sheet of paper above us.” You’d think him crazy, what is this “Up” and “Above” he’s talking about? And then the square jumps. To us, in the 3-D world, we’d see him move from one piece of paper to another. But to you, in Flatland, your Square buddy just vanished without a trace, right in front of your eyes! You don’t know to look up for him, and you physically couldn’t even if you did know. The Fourth Dimension is like that to us.
I’ve been thinking about ghosts, and how they can move through walls at will, if they are so inclined that is. One explanation for this is that ghosts are simply energy, or composed of some sort of extremely fine matter than can squeeze through the empty space in the molecules of the object they are phasing through. Similarly, their matter could simply be a few picometers to the left, or whatever, of the rest of the world’s matter. These are quite logical and scientific assumptions, but I want to add one more: ghosts move through the Fourth Dimension.
Not that they’re 4-D themselves, of course. They are 3-D beings with a 4-D range of motion. They may not even be aware of this, since their eyes probably can’t see the lambda-upsilon “holes” in the wall. Still, by some power they are able to utilize these holes to pass through anything, and ignore them, even if sub-consciously, in order to manipulate their surroundings. Not all ghosts can do this, however. Poltergeists and vengeful spirits are the most likely to be able to ignore the Fourth Dimension. A book I read, from which I pull most of my knowledge, suggests that perhaps the afterlife, the place most people go to after they die, is merely a few feet, or meters, upsilon of Earth, nearby yet completely out of our reach.
Portals, my favorite forms of transport, may also utilize the Fourth Dimension. I know I already claimed that portals are like trans-Universal wormholes, so I consider this an amendment/attachment to that claim. The worm-hole behavior makes perfect sense at the very edge of any given Universe, but most portals don’t show up at the extreme edge of outer-space. I’ve also said that the Universal Boundary both surrounds and permeates the Universe (see my first entry, the Encyclopedia of Multiverse Terminology). This could only be truly possible by utilizing the Fourth Dimension. A portal can move you lambda or upsilon, with a little veering in one or two of the other three dimensions, through space and Void to plop you down at almost any point in another Universe. This may be why portal jumping can feel weird the first few times you do it: you’re traveling in a direction you have no concept of, and it’s uncomfortable. Fortunately, most portals either dump you instantly at your destination, or move you a little bit forward, so you have something for your mind to grasp so you don’t go Cthulu-crazy.
Hypercubes can be one of two things. The first is hand-held cubic device with an active portal to Hammerspace, which uses the Fourth Dimension to move objects inserted in the cube to your little (or not-so-little) storage Dimension. The other kind of Hypercube is used to illustrate what a 4-D object could look like. You should know that it is possible to emulate a 3-D object on a 2-D surface, like drawing a cube. Making Hypercubes, or Tesserects, is the same way. It’s not possible to do it on a piece of paper, I’ve tried. It’d be like emulating a cube on a 1-D surface; you can’t make a cube on a single line. However if you have a 3-D modeling program on your computer, you can build a Hypercube by making two identical cubes and connecting the matching vertices with lines. It may look a bit messy, but it should allow you to visualize a 4-D object with your 3-D mind. Just don’t over-exert yourself and try to make a hyper-sphere, please.
Oh, and to you readers who live in 4-D world (wonder what this looks like to you…), there may very well be a fifth dimension out there…