What Does the Fourth Dimension Actually Look Like?

Maggie Miller explains why our intuition about three dimensions breaks down in four, and how she visualizes 4D spaces as a reel of three-dimensional snapshots.

The short version

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What happened

We know all about how things exist in the three dimensions of length, width, and height. Physicists often talk about time as a fourth dimension, but what if there were a fourth spatial dimension — another direction entirely?

Why it matters

Mathematicians use topology to visualize abstract spaces in higher dimensions.

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