Mirrors And The Fourth Dimension

less than 1m read

·Nov 10, 2024

Mirrors do not show us a fourth dimension, but they do show us what a fourth dimension could do to us. First, notice that some things are the same as their mirror image, but some things are not. These two shapes are similar, but they cannot be rotated to look identical, to be superimposable on each other. This is called being chiral.

A chiral shape and its mirror image are called anatomorphs. These two shapes are anatomorphs in two dimensions. No amount of two-dimensional rotations will ever make them superimposable. To do that, I'll need to smash one of them inside out, turn it into its own mirror image, or rotate it in a third, higher dimension.

If I place a sticker here and face that side away from me, notice that the mirror inverts the object, just like a rotation through a higher dimension. The side of the real object that's furthest from me becomes the side of the virtual object that's closest to me. So, what would I look like if I was rotated around a plane in a fourth spatial dimension and then brought back? I would look like that.

The Lost Forest | Nobel Peace Prize Shorts

This TRANSPARENT ENGINE is Fascinating (How Engines Work) - Smarter Every Day 292

View All

Photographing the Devastating Impact of Breast Cancer in Uganda

( intro music ) In 2013, I was asked to cover breast cancer in Uganda. Breast cancer has less than a handful of oncologists in the whole country. A woman who has breast cancer thinks of it as a death sentence. Most of the resources in Uganda went to HIV-…

Biased and unbiased estimators from sampling distributions examples

Alejandro was curious if sample median was an unbiased estimator of population median. He placed ping-pong balls numbered from zero to 32 in a drum and mixed them well. Note that the median of the population is 16. He then took a random sample of five bal…

CS50 Lecture by Mark Zuckerberg - 7 December 2005

MICHAEL D. SMITH: This afternoon I have the pleasure of introducing Mark Zuckerberg, which is one of our guest speakers this semester to come and talk a little bit about computer science in the real world. As most of you probably know, as you guys all do …

The Largest Black Hole in the Universe - Size Comparison

The largest things in the universe are black holes. In contrast to things like planets or stars, they have no physical size limit and can literally grow endlessly. Although, in reality, specific things need to happen to create different kinds of black hol…

Why Self-Discipline is so Hard

This is Odin, also known as the All-father. He will become the wisest and most powerful of the Norse gods, but not yet. For now, he hangs from Yggdrasil, the world tree that holds all nine worlds together, with a spear lodged in his chest. He will hang th…

Jessica Livingston : How to Build the Future

Hi everyone, my name is Sam Alman and this is how to build the future. Today, our guest is Jessica Livingston, the founder of Y Combinator, where I now work. Y Combinator has funded 1,500 startups and they’re worth more than $70 billion in total. More tha…

Mirrors And The Fourth Dimension

More Articles