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Scientifictionist, v. 1, issue 1, September 1945
Page 7
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Can anyone tell me of a higher speed in scientifiction? In Graph Waldeyer's THE 4-D DOODLER (July 41 Comet) we have an imitative four dimensional creature. When Harper, who doesn't confine his doodles to two dimensions, bends a two-dimensional paper doll into the third dimension, the 4-D creature bends a man into the fourth dimension, and half of that man disappears. When Harper picks up an orange to eat, the 4-D thing takes an orange and turns it inside out without breaking the skin, and puts it into Harper's stomach from the fourth dimension. When Harper enters the fourth dimension, he finds nothing apparently, under him, yet some sort of "surface tension" supports him, a segment of a space-warp. He is able to get back to the normal world by climbing down an object that passes from the 3-D plane to the 4-D one, since in the place where the object penetrated, space was fluid. The impression Waldeyer gives the reader as to what a four dimensional plane is like is hazy. And then we have Robert A. Heinlein's -- AND HE BUILT A CROOKED HOUSE. This contains a couple good descriptions of the perspective of a tesseract viewed in three dimensions, and a description of an unfolded tesseract. Well anyway, the latter design is used for building a futuristic house, which, naturally (?), was balanced on its fourth dimensional edge, but along came a slight earthquake and folded it up into a perfect tesseract. Which was very space-saving. Juts above the top story of the "crooked house" is the ground floor -- to me that suggests that perpetual motion would be possible due to that quirk. Later, it is suggested that a 3-D object has two choices when there are four dimensions; choices based on subconcious orientation; to take the normal straight line, or make a right angle turn into the fourth dimension, the latter being beyond his senses to realize. Could it be that if a person was transported to a universe of four spatial dimensions, normal 4-D objects would appear double; a 3-D person there occupying but half the space available and would be able to reach his hand inside himself should necessity or curiosity demand! Or, because a tesseract is composed of eight subes which apparently occupy the space of one 3-D cube, would normal 4-D objects appear octuple? -- thus eight 3-D objects comfortably occupying the same 4-D space. How about it? any opinions? No explanation was made as to what the windows of the third floor looked out upon, but the fourth (top) floor had a queer assortment of views; one, a shortcut to New York City; one, the sea; one, nothing, and the others fairly normal. All true "views" except the last were at wrong positions due to the 4-D bending of space. I'd like to know if Heinlein had anything really factual to base his opinions (?) of the fourth floor views on. No doubt there would be strange twisted views available somewhere due to the 4-D corners and angles, but it does not seem logical to me, that the views he chose to mention would be necessarily in the position he gave them. Then there is the question of the pull of gravity around the 4-D corner. Heinlein lets the normal down of the unfolded tesseract still be down to the objects inside after the folding collapse, yet when they look out around the 4-D corners the gravity pull is definitely from a wrong direction in most cases. Then comes the loss of the wonder-house. Since it is not anchored to our 3-D world anyplace; when a strong earth shaking occurs, the house collapses through another section of extra-dimensional space and simply disappears entirely from our space-frame. It seems fairly evident that more than one object of merely three dimensions would be able to occupy the same space in four dimensional space, therefore, if a way could be found to make a space-warp with four available dimensions, the warp would be a handy space-saver, since apparently, eight times the normal amount of material could be stored in the same space. 3-D objects could move through each other without any difficulty, which would also be very handy for doctors and repairmen, for an object would not have to be opened to get inside of it. (Continued on page 12) --(page 7)--
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Can anyone tell me of a higher speed in scientifiction? In Graph Waldeyer's THE 4-D DOODLER (July 41 Comet) we have an imitative four dimensional creature. When Harper, who doesn't confine his doodles to two dimensions, bends a two-dimensional paper doll into the third dimension, the 4-D creature bends a man into the fourth dimension, and half of that man disappears. When Harper picks up an orange to eat, the 4-D thing takes an orange and turns it inside out without breaking the skin, and puts it into Harper's stomach from the fourth dimension. When Harper enters the fourth dimension, he finds nothing apparently, under him, yet some sort of "surface tension" supports him, a segment of a space-warp. He is able to get back to the normal world by climbing down an object that passes from the 3-D plane to the 4-D one, since in the place where the object penetrated, space was fluid. The impression Waldeyer gives the reader as to what a four dimensional plane is like is hazy. And then we have Robert A. Heinlein's -- AND HE BUILT A CROOKED HOUSE. This contains a couple good descriptions of the perspective of a tesseract viewed in three dimensions, and a description of an unfolded tesseract. Well anyway, the latter design is used for building a futuristic house, which, naturally (?), was balanced on its fourth dimensional edge, but along came a slight earthquake and folded it up into a perfect tesseract. Which was very space-saving. Juts above the top story of the "crooked house" is the ground floor -- to me that suggests that perpetual motion would be possible due to that quirk. Later, it is suggested that a 3-D object has two choices when there are four dimensions; choices based on subconcious orientation; to take the normal straight line, or make a right angle turn into the fourth dimension, the latter being beyond his senses to realize. Could it be that if a person was transported to a universe of four spatial dimensions, normal 4-D objects would appear double; a 3-D person there occupying but half the space available and would be able to reach his hand inside himself should necessity or curiosity demand! Or, because a tesseract is composed of eight subes which apparently occupy the space of one 3-D cube, would normal 4-D objects appear octuple? -- thus eight 3-D objects comfortably occupying the same 4-D space. How about it? any opinions? No explanation was made as to what the windows of the third floor looked out upon, but the fourth (top) floor had a queer assortment of views; one, a shortcut to New York City; one, the sea; one, nothing, and the others fairly normal. All true "views" except the last were at wrong positions due to the 4-D bending of space. I'd like to know if Heinlein had anything really factual to base his opinions (?) of the fourth floor views on. No doubt there would be strange twisted views available somewhere due to the 4-D corners and angles, but it does not seem logical to me, that the views he chose to mention would be necessarily in the position he gave them. Then there is the question of the pull of gravity around the 4-D corner. Heinlein lets the normal down of the unfolded tesseract still be down to the objects inside after the folding collapse, yet when they look out around the 4-D corners the gravity pull is definitely from a wrong direction in most cases. Then comes the loss of the wonder-house. Since it is not anchored to our 3-D world anyplace; when a strong earth shaking occurs, the house collapses through another section of extra-dimensional space and simply disappears entirely from our space-frame. It seems fairly evident that more than one object of merely three dimensions would be able to occupy the same space in four dimensional space, therefore, if a way could be found to make a space-warp with four available dimensions, the warp would be a handy space-saver, since apparently, eight times the normal amount of material could be stored in the same space. 3-D objects could move through each other without any difficulty, which would also be very handy for doctors and repairmen, for an object would not have to be opened to get inside of it. (Continued on page 12) --(page 7)--
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