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I read a novel when I was 14 or so who's premise is all about creatures inhabiting higher-dimensional space called "The Boy Who Reversed Himself" by William Sle
by jitl 6mo ago
I read a novel when I was 14 or so who's premise is all about creatures inhabiting higher-dimensional space called "The Boy Who Reversed Himself" by William Sleator. I loved Sleator's books, they introduced me to really interesting concepts from theoretical physics as a youngun. If you find 4D Doom intriguing, I encourage you to borrow the book from your favorite ebook library, it's a quick fun read (at least, I remember it that way).
- Darmani 6mo agoFun fact: William Sleator's brother is the famous computer scientist Danny Sleator, inventor of the splay tree.
- UltraSane 6mo agoPart of Greg Egan novel Diaspora takes place in a universe with 5 spatial dimensions.
- ConceptJunkie 6mo agoI'm still trying to wrap my head around the statement in the book (IIRC) that it takes 8 legs to be stable in 5 dimensions. I'd assumed it would be 6, but this is a layman's intuition. Maybe I'm remembering it wrong. Awesome book regardless.
- chronolitus 6mo agoLoved this book! Part of this project started from wanting to make 4D creatures and train them to walk with RL. One interesting fact I learned is that ants would probably have 8 legs in 4D. Why? Well, apparently ants have 6 legs because this allows tripod-gait, a simple leg movement that always keeps 3 stable points on the ground[1] In 4D, you'd need 4 points on the ground, hence tetra-pod gait (4+4 legs). You could of course do with less, I'd guess even as low as 1-2 if you have lots of muscles and good balance. [1] https://dugas.ch/4d_creatures/tripod_gait.html https://dugas.ch/4d_creatures/tripod_gait.html