• Question: is the universe the 3d surface of a 4d donut ??? i think it is!!! :)

    Asked by miri22 to Davie, Gemma, James P, James V, Nuala on 26 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: James Pope

      James Pope answered on 26 Jun 2012:

      Hi Miri22,

      I’ve always though the universe is like a giant sphere expanding outwards in all directions away from the big bang, so I guess I’m in the 3D surface camp.

    • Photo: James Verdon

      James Verdon answered on 26 Jun 2012:

      Hi miri22,
      I think physicists are still getting to grips with this. Some believe that there may be more than the 3 dimensions that we know about.

      The best way to imagine this is to imagine you are a two dimensional object drawn on a bit of paper. You can move anywhere in the 2 dimensions of the sheet of paper, but you simply can’t see or be aware of the 3rd dimension, which is off the paper. Now extend that into 3 dimensions. We are 3 dimensional beings, so we can move in any of the 3 dimensions we experience, but we can’t extend into any of the extra dimensions.

      Some of the mathematics involved in some physics theories, especially string theory, state that there could be as many as 9 dimensions that we simply can’t see. So the universe might be a multidimensional shape. We don’t have any names for such shapes, nor can we really visualise what that might look like, because we can only image 3D shapes. Anyway, much of this is still a hypothesis, which means we haven’t been able to confirm this for sure yet.

    • Photo: Nuala Carson

      Nuala Carson answered on 27 Jun 2012:

      Hey miri22,

      I’m afraid i don’t know enough about this one to understand the 4D concept so at present I think of it as a 3D surface expanding away from a point of origin (the big bang). So i agree with James P.

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