Why can’t we move between dimensional planes?

Question

I get the idea of dimensions of reality and how there are eg infinite two dimensional planes in our 3d one. What I don’t get is why they can’t be moved between. In a 3d cube we can draw a 2d line between any two points by changing the direction.

Applying this to reality, if we exist in a universe with more than 3 dimensions, why are we unable to change the “direction” we are in?

I’ve often heard extra dimensions described as planes but why can we not change planes in the same way a diagonal line would. Is it because the concept of a higher dimensional direction doesn’t exist in our lower dimension?

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Answer 1

I think you’re confusing two different kinds of “dimensions” here. The more scientific definition of dimensions are the 4 dimensions that constitute the 3 cardinal directions plus time (some argue there are more, but that has yet to be supported experimentally).

The other definition you’re using for dimensions is the concept of separate realities that is popular in science fiction writings, for example, rick and morty traveling to parallel universes.

For the more scientific one, you can’t move “out” of the 4 dimensions but you can (and do) certainly move within any 4 of the dimensions in any way you want (except backwards through time, for reasons too advanced for this thread). You can’t leave these dimensions because they make up everything, and you can’t exist within nothing. Also, as I hinted at above, it’s possible that there are more than 4 dimensions in our universe but no one has created any sort of experiment to test whether or not they actually exist. However, *if* they exist, the same logic applies, and you can and do move through those dimensions. That said *if* they exist these dimensions are very *small* and are not noticeable by us.

The other kind of dimension, the parallel universe kind, are scientifically speaking completely different. This is another case of unsupported hypotheses, but *if* parallel universes exist, there’s no known way of traveling to and from them, and speculated on why not or how to do so is a exercise in futility.