Art Meets Mathematics in the Fourth Dimension

Download or read book Art Meets Mathematics in the Fourth Dimension written by Stephen Leon Lipscomb and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-10-13 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To see objects that live in the fourth dimension we humans would need to add a fourth dimension to our three-dimensional vision. An example of such an object that lives in the fourth dimension is a hyper-sphere or “3-sphere.” The quest to imagine the elusive 3-sphere has deep historical roots: medieval poet Dante Alighieri used a 3-sphere to convey his allegorical vision of the Christian afterlife in his Divine Comedy. In 1917, Albert Einstein visualized the universe as a 3-sphere, describing this imagery as “the place where the reader’s imagination boggles. Nobody can imagine this thing.” Over time, however, understanding of the concept of a dimension evolved. By 2003, a researcher had successfully rendered into human vision the structure of a 4-web (think of an ever increasingly-dense spider’s web). In this text, Stephen Lipscomb takes his innovative dimension theory research a step further, using the 4-web to reveal a new partial image of a 3-sphere. Illustrations support the reader’s understanding of the mathematics behind this process. Lipscomb describes a computer program that can produce partial images of a 3-sphere and suggests methods of discerning other fourth-dimensional objects that may serve as the basis for future artwork.