The 4th Dimension is a Reality

The Fourth dimension consists of nothing so romantic as a tesseract or hypercube and nothing so complex as a compressed or folded dimension. The solution is really a very simple concept indeed.

To begin the explanation we will first consider the notion of the three dimensions that most people are already familiar with.

In the image above, the Universe is represented by a sphere. Any point within the universe (the centre of the Earth for example) can be described by use of the coordinates X, Y and Z, which correspond to the three known dimensions of space.

If we now consider that the Universe is currently in a state of expansion, (as we were reliably informed by Hubble in 1920) an observer standing outside of our Universe would require a fourth parameter to specify the same point in space at any given time.

Therefore, to define a point in our Universe which takes into account the process of expansion, four dimensions are required: X, Y, Z and R, where R is the radius of the Universe at the time that the definition is made.

Einstein's Mistake

The Tome of Seus suggests that gravity is composed of two components, the Push and the Pull. The Pull, which we are all familiar with, refers to a force of attraction that binds us to our planet.

Put simply, the Push refers to a force associated with the expansion of the universe, a process rather like an explosion in which all the stars and planets are moving away from the centre of the universe, but because of our perception of time, the explosion is happening in super slow motion.

The hypothesis continues by suggesting that, if this process of expansion was applicable to all matter, (including structures like the atom) our planet and everything on it would be continually growing, but because the process would be so slow, and everything around us would be growing at the same rate, we would be unable to detect the changes.

One way that scientists might be able to prove or disprove this theory is by periodically measuring the diameter of the Earth using lasers and prisms, as they have done to monitor the distance between the Earth and the moon.