Einstein’s World

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XII, Issue 230, 11 September 1922, Page 2

Einstein’s World

FULL OF SURPRISES. MAY BE “FOURTH DIMENSION” WHERE SPIRITS MOVE. (By Physicist in “Sydney Sun.”) The subject of mathematics is, perhaps, the last in the world that might be expected to provide entertainment; yet the suggestion that there may be a fourth dimension opens up all kinds of wonderful possibilities. At present we can only realise that movement is possible in three directions, and that every material object has three , measurements — length breadth, and height and thickness. These facts have served us very well so far, but it can be shown by mathematics that three measurements are not enough to account for everything, and that there may be a fourth dimension. To understand what this would mean, consider what would happen if a being who could only realise two dimensions were brought into our world of three. Suppose, for example, wo were to experiment with a flat fish, whose whole world consists of the sandy bottom of the sea. He can only move about on that flat surface, and cannot rise even a quarter of an inch above it; so far as he is concerned height or depth doesn’t exist. To this flat fish, then, an ordinary shallow frame is an entirely closed room! For, if w 0 place the frame on the sea bottom, and put him inside, he .can’t get away; he can move backwards or forwards, or from side to side, but ho can’t move upwards, because he doesn’t know anything about upwards. So in whatever direction our flat fish moves he runs up against the sides of the frame, and finally gives up in despair convinced that he is in a prison.

THE BEWILDERED FISH. Then someone comes along and drops a stone into the open frame. The flat fish is immensely surprised, for this stone has suddenly appeared in an entirely closed room! Vainly he searches for an opening in the sides of the frame, but, of course, finds none; so, to his mind, a miracle has happened. But that is not all, for the person who dropped the stone into the frame now lifts it out again. At this that flat fish is more bewildered than ever; he was watching that stone, when, suddenly, without any perceptible movement, it disappeared! Before his eyes a large solid stone had vanished from a closed room. If he told the tale to other flat fish they simply wouldn’t believe him. We are better off than the flat flish because we realise three dimensions. But suppose there is a fourth. Let us call the fourth dimension “Time,” and let us also imagine that there are bpings that can move, nor only in the three directions known to us, but in “time” as well. Suppose we enter a room in which the only opening is a door; the ceiling, floor and walls may be of steel plates, so when the door is shut the room is—so far as we know—entirely closed. The only article of furniture in the room is a table; let us now lock and bolt the door. ENTER OUR WONDERFUL BEING. To our minds no one can enter or leave that room, but jilong comes that wonderful being who lives in a world of four dimensions; in his direction thd room is wide open, just as the flat fish’s “closed” room was open to us; so, thinking he will have a joke, lie moves the table very slightly in the direction of the fourth dimension, “time.” Suppose he moves it just a fraction of a second backwards in time; the table immediately disappears—so far as wo are concerned it has ceased to exist; it has vanished, before our eyes, from a locked room! *The joker now pushes the table back again into the present moment, and it suddenly reappears before us without a sound and without any movement that we can see; naturally we can’t see movement in a direction of which we know nothing. This theory of the fourth dimension is really very wonderful, and is often brought in to explain difficult matters. The spiritualists, for instance, have an idea that spirits may be able to move in this fourth dimension; which would enable them to enter or leave what we consider a closed room as easily as we ourselves could enter or leave the frame that imprisons the flat fish; though the fish is absolutely certain that there is no way out. It would really be very useful to have the power of moving in the fourth dimension, for when pursued by anyone it would be so easy to escape; just one step in that direction and you would instantly vanish.