random idea

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POzuXyuF9DQ

currently watching this

reminded of concepts like 4D

then im reminded of SCPs ive read, which also deal with 4D space, and a comment therein of "hey, if everything we know is just an infinitely small slice on the 4D plane, how do things just not "fall off", or "slide by eachother"?"

and that got me thinking

what if, in a world of 4D space, where 4D can exist, but not "commonly", the 4th direction is just heavily disincentivised? what if everything just "gravitates" towards a 3D "slice", and anyone "pushing" anything into the 4th direction just gets pulled back to the slice by gravity?

imagine a 4D alien "shooting" a baseball in the 4th direction, and then it dissapears, however, later, the ball appears in midair briefly, then a smaller moment than the last, again, again, again, until it seems to reappear completely, maybe phase in and out a little, until it is "there"

with this idea (and ignoring 3D gravity for a moment, lol), you could have some funky stuff of 4D without it becoming problematic in the sense of "what does this mean to everyone or everything else in a 3D universe, why dont we see things on a slice just next to ours pop in and out", or something like that

4D fauna, or matter, or anything

idk, im just rambling a story idea

canon idea, maybe

this is the problem i have with all that "dimension" stuff, maybe "dimensions" in this case could really be "oh, we have another plane just 1000 KM in the 4th direction, that is currently unstable, wobbly, and wobbling in the direction of this dimension (slice), so it may start to merge"

ohmygod

okay, so what if that is the idea of dimensions, and the whole "instability" thing

then you can also have "crossing points" of dimensions in universes, where multiple slices of mass have touched, and can go in multiple directions and such

you can solve so many handwaving problems with this in storytelling, wtf

making all dimensions just stacked 3D slices in 4D space, which all gravitationally hold themselves together, and instability and merging or crossing merely means a "slice" is just touching another "slice" of space

you can even expand this idea into 5th or 6th directions, where with a 5D space, a 3D slice is merely a point on a 2D plane, and with a 6D space, a 3D slice is a point in another 3D space

if you do this in a 5D space sense, then you can add notions such as "orbiting" or "stability", since there exists gravity on that scale, but with a 4D space, where every 3D slice is a point on a 1D line, its not stable, since everything wants to pull together to a single center of mass on that line

with 5D and 6D you add some more stability, imagine points in 2D planes orbiting eachother, or points in 3D space orbiting and doing the same

gravity in physics is a bit of a mystery, or at least, there exists an idea of mystery of "why is the graviton so weak?", and one suggestion is it that it is operating on multiple dimensions. what if this is where it is operating in? basically causing orbits of 3D slices, holding itself together, on an essentially 2D or 3D space?

with this, you can very very very intuitively also explain ideas of dimensions, "closeness", "travelling" between dimensions, as simply just lifting the idea of travelling between planets and their orbits, and projecting that into the idea of "travelling between dimensions"

"dimensional merging" could also be made intuitive, as its just... the crashing of 2 3D slices into eachother, like two planets would

also imagine the gravitational effects of what would happen when 2 3D slices, points, would have on eachother if they were to come close, have any of y'all seen simulations of what would happen when the milky way and the Andromeda galaxy merge? its not clean, a lot of matter shoots off, and its very sloppy and messy style

https://tenor.com/view/milky-way-andromeda-explosion-4billion-year-space-gif-16480443

imagine this, but with entire "dimensions" (3D slices on a 5D/6D space) of universes crashing into eachother

you could maybe even see this just as a "multiverse" of universes, possibly, but it all exists in the same "physical space", just... with more dimensions

being pushed outside of your 3D slice is like being pushed inside a lightless and matterless void, until you get "pulled back" into such the slice, as light would be bounded by the gravity of the slice

however, possibly, light would still "wobble" outside, if the entire 3D slice could be gravitationally wobbly, sorta like a sheet being disturbed and wobbling, so you could stand/hover "next" to the slice, the light inside would be "wobbled" outside (think of what happens when you let a weight on a rope occilate a little), bounce off of you, and go back inside

your light would transmit occasionally to the people inside, but the closer they'd walk, the more faint you'd become, unless the 3D slice actually intersects with you. (you'd also have to resist the gravitational effects of the 3D slice, but thats another problem)

also the light all across the universe, for that universe, would have a "strobing" effect, flickering in and out of existence

imagine a night-sky of stars winking in and out, as their light gets wobbled inside and outside of the current 3D position of your eyes and such

omg, imagine scientists noticing that, and using that to infer what is actually happening, the 3D wobbling, the closeness of other slices/points/dimensions

all of this can be made so scientific, all of this can be written in a way that is fucking bonkers (the night sky flickering in and out? like a strobe light? what???), but when you put it all together, it starts to make sense

(my caffeine is kicking in, you can see)

regarding the whole wobbling thing; imagine a 2D sheet of matter inside a 3d square, now imagine that light is only moving across that 2D sheet of matter

now, if matter is "wobbling", oscilating, and not being entirely straight into that square, the light will "shoot" outside of the matter sheet

here i have simplified the sheet to a line onto a 2D sheet, observe how with the above one (a non-wobbly matter-sheet), the light will exist "on" it, and everyone can see every point in space, given they orient them towards the light of one

however, with the bottom one, a "wobbly" spacetime, light will "shoot off" the matter sheet, and will try to rectify back to the sheet itself, but only on the intersecting points is that light actually visible to a 3D (here 1D) observer.

here all the light is shooting towards the "right", but you can see how at every point, every line of light doesnt follow the sheet exactly, and will just... intersect, and basically ocilate it at certain points

my occilations and curves are very bad here, but i hope that this can show how it could basically like... make occilations like that possible, how the sky could become a strobelight, and how the impossible could appear to happen

matter could escape the "sheet" entirely, if disturbed badly enough, and so could be observed by simple 3D observers elsewhere in 6D space, as it simply would look like an entire other starry sk

or well, deep-space observations

you can also do funky stuff when curving this entire thing, when creating a positively curved universe, so to speak

you'd basically be doing something like... curving a sheet, you'd create a cylinder, and the only thing then that could prevent that sheet from collapsing in on itself (because of gravity) would be a rotation applied, which keeps it stable

from within the 3D slice, to a 3D observer, the universe merely seems to repeat back onto itself after a certain distance, maybe even expand, if the cylinder is not gravitationally bound, or too speedy, while light is... relatively stable, not wobbly, because of the way that it can curve with the cylinder, so to speak

however, with a curved universe like that, you can then do fun things, like shortcutting space itself

sorta imagine an ant inside a circle, if you can just... go into direct lines between different points on that circle, you'd be shortcutting space

this is only when space is positively curved, its not like this can be the case when space is not "curved" like this, when its a flat sheet that stays relatively flat, or a line that stays a line, not a circle

one more thing though, is that "hyperspace" drives, or, warpdrives in 5D/6D space, can be very very very easily done, since there is (or, should be) no matter in other parts of 6D space, so making a warpdrive there that accelerates past lightspeed through the Alcubierre drive would be "safe", with extra asterisks, as it can just simply... sidestep our universe, and make a detour with technology that would be very dangerous in a space which has matter

a few things, as a result;

hyperdrive technology, then, can be enabled to hop between 3D slices, as they can just... continue on accelerating in those directions, to a known location of that orbiting 3D slice

hyperdrive technology would also become very risky if the 3D slice it is operating on is wobbly, if it came close enough to another 3D slice that now the entire universe is sorta wobbling and oscilating in 5D/6D space

this also doesnt have to end with 5 or 6 dimensions btw, i remember String Theory needing 11 dimensions of space to make sense, and you can easily apply the "gravitationally bound 3D slices" principle to that, but i think that stopping at 6D, and reducing 3D space down to a point due to the fact it is gravitationally bound, is much easier to grasp than to... imagine more dimensions

btw, in 6D space, a wobbling 3D slice would look like a ball of oscilating waves, sorta rising and falling into eachother, while a (perfect) 3D "sheet" slice would look like a infinitely small point

*thinking about a story plot point, or story background idea, where half of the universe was "ripped away" by an unknown force, but is forming a ring system in 6D space around the original "point", forming a spherical universe, possibly with all kinds of weird twists and turns, as it hasnt stablised, and the gravitational 3D "sheet" is twisting in on itself*

you can do so much cool stuff with this

all without even touching magic, or something like that

Having a 6D object appear in 3D slices, if it emits its own light, would actually be pretty wild

Because you'd be multiple "points" "inside" or hanging unsupported outside of their body, that would oscillate in intensity if you're moving and far away, but be relatively constant if you're close

I'm starting to think that this this is a bit unrealistic, since all of these objects and matter would still be "far away" from eachother

It's not like the matter is still "close", as now it is moving away with a large difference

Maybe only several AU away from the other half in 6D, it could make sense

Im also now thinking of an idea of something that could make a bit more sense, a "rogue planet" that is orbiting around its star in 6D space, basically existing inside of the star if it were projected back onto 3D space, but orbiting in 6D space (as visualised as a ghostly infinite point (3D matter/slice) onto a 3D space)

I'm also starting to think that "orbits" in 6D space are a bit more complicated when a 3D slice is "wobbly", as only certain parts of that 3D space would be "closer" to other 3D parts of another 3D slice, basically "ripping itself apart" by then smearing or stretching along that 6D space, sorta

Beh

Omg

This could maybe also explain dark matter, or the appearance of dark matter, which exerts gravitational effects while staying invisible

What if two 3D slices are orbiting eachother, like a binary system, but the matter in both dimensions "mirror up" eachother, causing gravitational effects that can't be explained by observable matter

here is an example of that dimensional slicing, the "red" line in the above one (which is 3D) is the perpendicular angle of the below, which is a 3D mapping of the XY of the lower 3 dimensions, and its "perpendicular" angle being the red line

here you can also see why they need to be orbiting, as else those two "sheets" would just "fall" to eachother

this is why 4D space cant work to hold "dimensions" apart, then its just the bottom presentation, and the above cant exist, since everything is just a point on a line, and it would just gravitationally "fall" to eachother

another interesting bit; say that the yellow stuff is things that exist inside of that "6D space" of the above, but only inside of a single point on the 3D slice

then it would only be visible really as this "line" that pieces through those two "sheets"

im also starting to realise how the need to have everything like this be perfect 3D points in 6D space doesnt really make sense, rotation exists, so hyperdrives dont need to "push" themselves into 6D space, but they only merely have to rotate themselves into that space, move along some perpendicular axes, and then "rotate" themselves back into 3D space, no propulsion, no "leg out" required, just rotation of some kind

anyways

this is a lot of braindumping about one particular concept

but i was just thinking on how to make "dimensions" and such not that handwavey, what for effects it might have, how it would look like, and how things like magic could simply just... interact with this basic principle, just slightly differently

magic is all about ignoring certain laws of nature anyways, while obeying others, and it would be interesting if magic could ignore the laws about energy conversion, but do obey the laws of physical space like this, and still "work" in its entirety like "magic", just that one part of it can be explained by thinking about space differently

there is one problem ive noticed with this all though, and it is light

because... light should emit in all directions, and yet here that wont work, either it'll cause a lot of weird effects, such as being able to "see" through objects, or would have to... actually no

hmmmmm

i think that only very very strong gravitational objects would be able to highlight just how much more extra light an object emits, as it "pulls" it back

lemme make another illustration

here's the problem im having, say that the yellow dot is a light source, and the blue dot is an observer, the light cannot reach it "directly" via its own 3D slice, but it can be observed, if the light were to bend

however, im thinking that this is not a problem, since either a very strong gravitational lensing would be required (like with black holes), or we could say that simply all light gets emitted everywhere

this causes 2 interesting phenomena;

1, light from other "dimensions" would be able to be observed very very faintly, and very sporadically, and not even be "focused"

im talking something like... a blue glow, if the light from another dimension is "close", but a blue glow everywhere, with no shadow, with no lensing

one could observe and try to make out features by having something able to orient itself in 6D, maybe even rotate the light into the 3D slice, but this would require science that knows about that

what im more concerned about here is conventional science noticing that an object emits more light than expected, and/or seeing the "behind a wall" effect, but this is likely to not be the case, as light escapes very very quickly, unless there is strong gravity

2, it might be possible that a strong enough gravitational object, when "near" another dimension on the 6D space, could "lens" that other dimension back into the 3D slice, so that it is observable

so you'd basically see "ghost images" inside of Einstein lensing effects of other realities, light that has been "bent back" from a perpendicular plane into our 3D slice

im writing out what science would observe, given these effects, and how such a "dimension" thing could be introduced to our world, if/when scientists would "notice" these effects, would appear incredibly weirdly, and then cause those unexplainable effects, that're explainable as long as you're able to understand what would happen if reality is 6D, and that everything is held together into 3D slices due to gravity

These ghost images wouldn't have detail, maybe it would be noticed as an "extra ring of light, around every strong gravitational source in the near universe", with a color that's the sum of all light emitted from those other dimensions, no structures or such could be discerned, and it would be a circle, since those realities are perpendicular to ours, so to speak

this extra light could be erroneously interpreted as "zero point energy" (an idea in quantum mechanics, that, no point in the universe has absolute 0 energy, but that no point in the universe could be between 0 and 1 "energy" (as derived by plank units), and so these points would appear to be sporadically between 0 and 1 energy (that's a core tenet behind "quantum" mechanics, which is that there's a "quantum" of energy, and nothing can be "between" those steps/differences/amounts of energy, and when it does, fucky stuff happens)), but it is just instrumentation being hit by light from other "dimensions". There is no extra energy in a vacuum, it's just extra photons zipping through

This could be interpreted as a higher, or higher-than-normal "zero point" energy, weird sensor readings, or other, as no device is able to be completely shielded in those other 3 dimensions, and so light just "hits" it, from somewhere else

There's something else, an apocalypse scenario

I think that a "wobbly" dimension would not really be possible, unless another dimension either comes really close, or "passes through" it

Such a scenario could look like objects in the sky suddenly coming into view, some stars, or some planets, then they would as quickly disappear again, but new objects would appear outwards in a spherical "ripple" from any observer

Light from further in space would then start to "oscillate", in sync, but when the "ripple" of objects appearing in and out of view "hits" it, it would oscillate out of sync, possibly only fading into view slightly

That "ripple" of foreign objects is the light of those objects passing through our 3D slice as the entire dimension passes through it, pulling with it (with various gravitational effects, depending on closeness) various objects from the sky "perpendicular" to our plane, "wobbling" back in and out

It would be really cool, and make no fucking sense to scientists (at first)

Thinking...

Light is polarised, so if science could... somehow, get its hands on a filter or lens that filters light that's polarised in a higher dimension, they could potentially build a very very rough "direction seeker" for light, basically mapping out light sources

If they have a way of rotating the filter's polarisation, they could "fix" certain light "sources" (entire dimensions), and possibly, with the help of rotating it along the 3D direction, also "scan" or "map" light from a whole-ass dimension like that, all from within a deep bunker, so to speak

The light would be pretty sparse, or about as bright as objects in our sky would be, and they'd need to have a good way of attaining resolution of sorts, (there's no lensing here, after all), they could possibly start that mapping process, but it's very sparse

But that could be an infliction point of "oh my god, we're seeing a whole different dimension"

These filters and lenses could possibly also be used in dimension hoppers at a later stage, as "fixes" that "fix" a direction to "shoot" to

I'm also starting to think about how radio waves could work like this, since light = electromagnetic radiation. If they could somehow "shoot" off a probe into those higher dimensions (not on earth, since earth's gravitational attraction is already a lot for normal rockets, lest one that's trying to shoot off into 6D space), they could use that lensing to discern/denoise transmitted radio waves back from the probe, to gain more data

As without such a lens, the radio waves would just become part of the background radiation that persists everywhere, so to speak

Anyways, science

physical laws should largely remain the same between dimensions, same for matter distribution, in a sense

which makes the idea that some dimensions are "different" kinda moot, or it would require some of those axes to be gradients of cosmic laws as well

then the only difference between one dimension and another is its "position" on those axes of cosmic laws

this does mean that magical items cant be "brought over" between dimensions, if the cosmic laws underpinning them dissapear along the gradient that they're trying to be displaced over

it also means that any transport is "limited" in its area that it can go to, if cosmic laws go out from under them, that support their particular way of travel

hmmmm

one thing could be that physical location exists in 5D, but there's one auxiliary "dimension" to it, which is the gradient of cosmic law, while matter from one "level" of that gradient to another can still interact with eachother, basically making it nonexistent except for something like... "internal frequency"

however, this "dimension" or "frequency" would not signal anything physical, just, some kind of like... "how much magic" law, and a lot of matter from one dimension seems to be "bunched up" into that frequency, and matter brought into contact would bunch up and be brought together

So in other words, "magical matter", when touching "non magical matter", would lose some of its magic, while the non magical would gain some of it, until it reaches an equilibrium

Anything that could transfer or extract energy from/to this "vibration" of "magical ness" would be extremely useful in stabilising magical or non-magical matter

I'm thinking if this should be affected by gravity...

If it is, then something like an "orbit" of two dimensions, would oscillate eachother among this "auxiliary direction", basically making one universe very magical for a long time, then non-magical, and back again

(That could have interesting background lore consequences, imagine a whole universe filled with dead magic fauna, who died because magic suddenly faded away, or the opposite, a society which gradually is increasing in magical ability)

Btw, hyper dimensional travel/rotation in 5D would be really cool to see; you'd be collapsing your own universe in to a single line of light, spanning infinitely, while then other light lines would span the viewfinder, which you'd then accelerate towards, arriving, and then have that line unfurl into a whole universe, rotating across the 4th and 5th dimension

rotation across physical 6D would be some of the same, but they'd be points of light only

these lines would be super faint though, but they'd be detectable against the pitch-black background of absolutely no light at all