4-Dimensional Beings!

[Spoonius]

Let me start off by saying that this stuff interests the shit out of me, even though I'm not a physicist.

Ok, so after living my entire life believing that time was the fourth dimension (I'm still not sure how it fits into all of this), I've been trawling through various articles talking about the fourth dimension as an abstract spatial concept.

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but the idea is that although we can perceive the 1st, 2nd and 3rd dimensions, we can't perceive (or perhaps even comprehend) the 4th.
Likewise, a 2-dimensional being wouldn't be able to perceive the 3rd dimension, and so on.
For example, if we lived in a 2-dimensional world as 2-dimensional beings, we would perceive everything on a flat plane. We wouldn't see circles, or squares, or anything like that, only 1-dimensional lines of various heights and lengths around us, the closer ones obscuring the distant ones.
As for being 1-dimensional, imagine being stuck in a narrow pipe. All you can comprehend is length, above and below.

TL;DR: So my question is... what could a 4-dimensional being possibly be like? Would it be able to comprehend reality in a way that we can't, similar to how we can view complex geometric shapes when viewing a 2D environment (like a sheet of paper)? Would it be able to see everything at once, like we can with 1D/2D environments? How could it interact with our world in ways that we can't? Could it phase from place to place, just as we can jump over ground?

This is sci-fi gold, and I'm really hoping to gain some perspective (punny, huh...).

 

[Daystar Clarion]

Isn't the 4th dimension time & space?

Or have I been watching too much sci-fi?

 

[aba1]

I am not really religious or anything but wouldn't it be interesting if 4th dimensional beings were what we came to know as God and there influence is what caused religion. I dunno silly yes but I think the concept is interesting at least.

Isn't the 4th dimension time & space?

Or have I been watching too much sci-fi?

This is what I thought as well but apparently it is not.

 

[Jonluw]

As far as I understand the concept, we do move through four dimensions.
The fourth dimension in this case being time.

We are only, however, capable of experiencing a 3-dimensional cross-section of the fourth dimension at any given time.
So while we can, and do, perceive the fourth dimension, we can not observe it from the outside. We would have to move through five dimensional space to be able to do that.

It's probably impossible to understand what it'd "look" like though. Because we only know the first three dimensions, our minds might not have any way to interpret information from looking at the fourth dimension from the outside.

You can sort of imagine it like this though: In the fourth dimension, your body is a long undulating snake. A snake that starts out the shape of a baby, bulges out to the shape of a grown person, and then collapses into the shape of a dead person.

There are no specific rules for what dimension is what. It's just labels for the axes on a coordinate system, and you can assign whatever to whichever axis if it serves your purposes.
In the context of space and what not, i.e., what you're talking about, time is normally assigned to the fourth axis.
Although there's the whole thing with spacetime and stuff that I don't really know much about myself.
From what I gather, it's just saying that time is another axis on the coordinate system like width and depth is.

Spoiler: Here's a pretty good video explaining the subject

Remember that I don't know much on the subject. There might very well be a good deal of factual incorrectness in my post here.

 

[Mayhaps]

Isn't the 4th dimension time & space?

Or have I been watching too much sci-fi?

3 dimensional space, sometimes time is referred to as the 4th dimension. I guess you're referring to spacetime. But it's not the same as 4 dimensional space, which messes with our brains if we try visualize it.

OP, There are some interesting videos on this on youtube I'm sure you won't have any trouble finding them, I can't say much about it myself though.

 

[Hoplon]

Isn't the 4th dimension time & space?

Or have I been watching too much sci-fi?

No, just worded wrong, three of space and one of time. Frankly "time" is just our word for a 4th spacial dimension that we perceive really really badly.

as to the Op, no idea since this a being that can step in to a sealed room with the same ease we step in to a circle.

 

[CODE-D]

Perhaps living things can only exist in the 3rd dimension and your over thinking things and there really is no 4th dimension as time is but a mere construct of measurement created by man to tell one moment from another.

Hazzah Im off!(flies away)

 

[Saulkar]

There is this to consider.
http://teamikaria.com/hddb/

Spoiler: THE FOURTH DIMENSION

Higher Dimensions
Your reference and discussion zone for everything about higher-dimensional geometry.

The universe that we live in has only three spatial dimensions. We are limited to length, width, and height, and we can only travel along three perpendicular paths. This page attempts to explain the properties of a hypothetical universe with a spatial fourth dimension. While people generally call time the "fourth" dimension in the universe we live in, time will be the "fifth" dimension in my hypothetical universe.

Many fascinating possibilities exist when a spatial fourth dimension is present. Several types of wheels are possible, very complex machines can be built, and many more shapes are possible. Objects can pass by each other more easily, but they are harder to break into multiple pieces. Energy reduces much faster with distance than in the third dimension, so both light and sound are weaker. Many more things can be compacted into a small space, but it's much easier to get lost.

This is exactly what you are looking for.
Enjoy!

EDIT: Forgot this.

 

[KishinZero]

Think about it this way. A 1D being (a line) has a shadow that becomes a dot. A dot is a 0D being. A 2D square has a shadow of a 1D line. A 3D cube has a shadow of a square. Using this knowledge it is logical to conclude that a 4D tessarect would have the shadow of a 3D cube. While lower dimensions cannot see higher dimensions, they can see glimpses of their shadows. Since 3D objects can easily destroy 2D objects then 4D objects could easily destroy 3D objects. This information causes me to believe that a black hole is just the shadow of a 4D circle.

 

[Saulkar]

a 4D tessarect would have the shadow of a 3D cube.

You were watching Carl Sagan weren't you?

 

[KishinZero]

a 4D tessarect would have the shadow of a 3D cube.

You were watching Carl Sagan weren't you?

Actually I came up with that on my own. Granted it was after one of his videos about the fourth dimension, so yes, he helped with it.

 

[Olas]

I think time CAN work as a 4th dimension but if so it's unique in that we can only travel through it in one fixed direction. A 4D object can be viewed, just not all at once.

Also, thanks for giving me an excuse to post this.