yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

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.

More Articles

View All
Charlie Munger: The Real Estate Crash of a GENERATION
Billionaire investor Charlie Munger just issued a dire warning about what’s ahead for the U.S. real estate market, and unlike most people who issue these types of predictions, Munger actually knows a thing or two about the topic. Before he rose to fame as…
Power Under Pressure: Getting it Done (Clip) | Alaska: The Next Generation
Here we go. That’s basically it, and that’ll be the reel system to reel all the line in as that sled goes up. All that’s left to do is to string up the cordage. I gotta couple strands of cord and going to replace that other cordage I was using because tha…
Follow a Nat Geo Photographer on His Silk Road Adventure | National Geographic
I’m John Stanley. I’m a photographer with National Geographic magazine here on assignment for part six of the Out of Eden Walk. We started in Africa in January 2013, and we’ve been walking overland, doing slow journalism. Now we’re in Uzbekistan. [Music]…
Space Probe Cemetery | Exomars: The Hunt For Life
The first successful Mars mission was in 1964. Along the way, Mars would become the space probe cemetery. Bogalusa, a lot of space probes have been lost along the way; some of them we lost track of upon their arrival. Others flew past the planet without s…
The 5 BEST Credit Cards For Cash Back
What’s of you guys? It’s Graham here. So, after the recent popularity of the Apple credit card video, it came to my attention that a lot of people were focusing on the 2% cashback on the products purchased through Apple Pay and then also focusing on the …
A warning about the Uber IPO…
What’s up, guys? It’s Graham here. So, two things. Number one, a picture of my land has been going viral lately on the internet. People are saying it’s like a black hole or something like that. I just want to put this to rest once and for all—it’s just a…