I frequently hear people say that the universe is based off of a 4th-dimensional space-time continuum. As a result, it could hypothetically do things like loop on itself if you went in one direction long enough. However, people often point out that the 4th dimension is not time, but rather an independent spacial dimension. At the same time though, they might talk about how the 4th dimension actually is time in the space-time continuum, which makes no sense to me at all. Is the 4th dimension time in the space-time continuum, or something else?
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Imagine, if you can, living in a 2-dimensional world. You’re a square, among many other flat shapes that can only move or perceive their world in 2 dimensions, “edge” on, right? What would happen if I took this hypothetical piece of paper all the 2 dimensional people lived on, and plopped a cube on it. What would they see? Looks kind of like a square when you can only see the edge-on 2D face of a cube. But me and everyone else out here in the third dimension knows it’s a cube, and there’s a whole facet of this universe above and below the piece of paper the 2D people conceive as their whole world that they aren’t even aware of.
This is *kind of* what you’re hearing when you see people discussing the higher dimensions. We’re just a bunch of flat shapes speculating about what depth would look like. Unfortunately, the prevailing theories are that there are actually more than 4 dimensions to the universe that are even harder to perceive and measure outside of complex mathematical models I don’t understand at all. Which is why the answer changes, depending on who you ask, at what level and even how much “time” as a concept enters the equation.
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