4th spatial dimension

it has been long thought by physicists that in our reality the 4th dimension is manifest as temporal, a theory still standing today. Does anyone have any knowledge or ideas on how a fourth spatial dimension could be measured or as to how it may be manifest?

Well, I tend to pop up whenever there's some 4-d stuff being talked about, so here I am

The 4th dimension does exist, and in a sense can be measured. It is Space-Time (what Einstein was talking about in General Relativity).

When a moon falls into orbit around a planet, it's because the planet and the moon are creating slight imperfections (warps) in the space-time continuum, which cause the moon and planet to be in a state of falling towards each other, but never getting there.

Think of it like this. Take a sheet of paper, and put it on a bowl. Now, take a marble and put it in the middle of this sheet of paper. See how the sheet of paper sinks where the marble is? The marble's mass warps the fabric of the paper, and warps it's 2-dimensional space. If you were a 2-dimensional object travelling along the paper, and you tried to travel in a straight line beside the marble (which you see as a circle) you would find yourself unexplainably starting to move around the marble. "Straight-forward" has somehow turned into a bend. Now, since paper is made of a substance, not even the heaviest marble could bend the paper to cause a straight line to turn into a circle.

Now, if you take that example, shift the dimensions up by 1, you'll notice that you - as a 3-dimensional creature, on a 3-dimensional plane of existance, cannot see the 4-dimensional warping of space-time. Things now appear to orbit each other, pulled towards each other. Really, the space is warped in such a way that moving straight forward leads them in a big circle over and over again.

Wierd, huh?

Originally posted by Antu54
it has been long thought by physicists that in our reality the 4th dimension is manifest as temporal, a theory still standing today. Does anyone have any knowledge or ideas on how a fourth spatial dimension could be measured or as to how it may be manifest?

Start on Wikipedia, looking up Klein Bottles.

As a matter of fact, there's a lot of topology that eplores this. But start with Klein bottles and follow the links to the other types of universes and so forth. There's a lot of math and topology that deals with this.

Thnak you I appreciate your info. I am aware of 4d 'dynamics' in their application in or out of 3d, but what I am trying to get at is how say a 4d spatial dimension can be 'added', for example to a 3d 'cube' if such was a template. I suppose I am suggesting that a 4th spatial dimension CAN exist in a three dimensional universe as an isolate or contained form. Basically, draw a hollow cube. You can account for x,y,z axis' but try to draw in a 'w' axis also. I struggle with the words to define my query cleary so i apologize, but I think you know what i am getting at, no?

Well a 4-d Cube is called a "Tesseract".

There's an easy way to draw a Tesseract in 2-d.

Draw a cube
_
I_/I
I_I/

Then, for each "face" of the cube, draw a cube on the inside of the cube.

You will end up with a cube within a cube, with the inner and outer corners having a line between them.

Essentially, that's a 2-dimensional representation of a 4-dimensional object. If it were actually 4-dimensional, the two cubes would rest in the same 3-dimensional space, with a 4-dimensional line of equal length to those 3-dimensional lines, connecting the two through the 4th dimension.

Go to Wikipedia and search for Tesseract, it should help you some more.

That's what I am talking about, thx! Now, if the 'inner' cube's points each turned to face a plane on the outer cube could it not 'expand' outside the outer cube with the 'outer' cube collapsing inward, kinda like Doctor Who's tardis, (a huge room in a telephone booth.) If this could be a self sustaining reaction the two could continually oscillate inside out of each other no?