Tesseacts

Can you visualize a cube? That's the shadow of a tesseract.

>>7841951
thread over.

>>7841951
>>7841984
But that's not even true.
The shadow of a cube is not even a square under most view angles.

>>7842706
lighting* angles

>>7842706
maybe he means that a cube is the shadow of a tesseract under specific viewing angles.

>>7842706
You're not reading right bro. He said "A cube is a shadow...... of a tesseract" (the shadow of a tesseract is 3D)

>>7842819
>>7842706
Ah wait, I wasn't reading you right.... But the shape of a tesseract isn't always cube-shaped.
So probably this : >>7842709.
But talking about viewing angles in 4D is beyond me.

>>7841888
Tesseract is a 4D cube. Praise me.

File: cubes1.jpg (35KB, 641x512px) Image search: [Google]

35KB, 641x512px

>>7841888
Ok.
I bet you can intuitively work around in 1,2,3 dimensions.
To specify position of a point in space we use vectors.
When you have 1D space, your points can only have one coordinate. If you take some point and translate it along the only axis and collect all the points in between you get a line with vertices (0) and (1) or something.
Now if you have 2D space and a line (parallel to one of the axles), you can move it along the other and get a square. Now you need 2D vectors to specify coordinates of your points, so vertices should now have positions: (0,0), (0,1), (1,1), (1,0).
You can do the same thing in the 3D space and get a cube with coords (0,0,0), (0,0,1), (0,1,1), (0,1,0), (1, 0, 0)...
Point, line, square and cube are all hypercubes. The 4D hypercube is a tessaract.
To construct a tessaract you need a space where vectors are composed of 4 elements (4D space) and translate a cube along new axis, so you get a shape with 16 verticles, 32 edges, 24 faces and 8 cells. Such an objects doesn't exists in our 3D space so don't try to imagine them, you can only use math to study, not your 3D senses.
Your gif is a common way to represent 4D shapes on 2D plane(screen). You can only accurately represent 2D shapes on your screen, so to display 3D objects you need some simplification. On pic related we translate 3D points to 2D space simply by adding some fraction of depth to width and height. Our brains can easily reconstruct this shape back to 3D cube. On your gif however 4D shape got translated to 3D space by scaling 3D part of the vector by 4rd element and then rendered onto 2D plane using common methods. It's also rotating in few direction simultaneously. You can rotate 4D shape in 6 ways. (3D in 3 ways and 2D in 1 way)

Pro tip:

Whenever you hear someone discuss a 'tesseract' with respect to relativity, spacetime or Minkowski space, they are revealing that they don't understand the concept of spacetime and the 4th dimension whatsoever.

It's a novelty of the math used to explain spacetime, in which, crudely, 'duration' serves as a 4th dimension.

A better way of visualizing the 4th dimension would be to imagine a car driving down the road, between point a and point f. Imagine somehow you could see the car at points a, b, c, d, e and f all at once. That would be like 'seeing the 4th dimension.'

Have you ever read any of Feynman's books, where he talks about PhD scientists who don't really know what they're talking about because they've been taught to just run math equations like monkeys?

The tesseract is an example of that type of thinking.

>>7842980
>we
what are you implying?

>>7842976
>>7842980
Because when you try to imagine something, you try to simulate how your senses would react to this object. All your senses are suitable for 3D objects in 3D space so there is no way to image how they would work with 4D objects in 4D space.

>>7842991
It's just a mathematical construct.
I don't even know if 3D spacial space exists, physics is crazy.
But it's easy to assume that for basic physics calculations.

>>7842969
>Imagine somehow you could see the car at points a, b, c, d, e and f all at once
That's exactly what a high enough dosage of LSD will do to your perception of time. /sci/ generally doesn't like the idea of "4D" visual perception being possible so I'm expecting the "babbling fractal stoner" comment.

>>7843049
And?

>>7843088
Perhaps someone here wants to experience it himself, now that it's been mentioned.