h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Magic in Hyperspace: Walking Through Walls and Other Party Tricks - A2946747
Author: Baryonic Being - U234603

I had wanted to modify this and add to it, but it seems I'll never get round to it.

Besides, I've forgotten what I wanted to modify/add now.

Hi BB - I loved it. At the moment I can't think how you might improve it - you take a number of well known theories and explain them in a very entertaining manner.

Improving? I think it's great!!! I'm more of an artist than anything, but I'm a very big fan of "hard" science fiction & the science behind it.

I LOVED this article! Great job!

Why, thank you very much.

Yep. It's really good. I've just read half of it so far, and I really loved the title and the intro!

About not being able to go through an atom although it consists mainly of nothing... I have always had the picture of atoms being kind of like huge and very fast propellers, if you're fast and small enough to be able to miss the rotating blades of the propeller you would be able to pass though the propeller without hitting the electron. I thought this is more or less how the neutrinos do it. Of course this is just a picture in my imagination... Do you think this picture could be helpful, or is it too confusing?

Anyways... I'll go on to read the rest...

HELL

Hey there BB Buddy!

You know that I loved the piece, and I really hope you find additional time you can spare to play with it even more.

Two things occur, that you may or may not consider. In the discussion of the 'cloud of electrons', questioning why they don't collide, the like charges would cause electrons to bounce off each other's fields before impact. In fact, the repulsion should keep them all pretty much equidistantly spaced, don't you think? I'm surprised they move at all.

The other thing was the discussion of Harry's heart:
"In order to reverse the 'handedness' of Harry's heart, we simply take him out of his 2D world again, flip him over, and put him back down. Amazingly, he finds that his heart is now on the right side of his body."

It seems to me that handedness is relative, and what Harry would find is that everyone else's heart was now on the right side of their bodies. Of course to any other 2d character, it would seem that Harry's heart flipped.

Take care, and best regards.

I like the way you've pitched this nicely so that any fule nos what you're on about, great stuff!

With that in mind, just one thing:

>atom is 10-9m in diameter

You might need to explain the annotation involved in describing really tiny sizes. I don't think your average non-scientist, faced with this, would know what you're on about.

Apart from that, a work of genius

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

"I have always had the picture of atoms being kind of like huge and very fast propellers"

I'd like to hear someone else's opinion of this analogy, because, whilst it is a very good one for the purposes of imagining what is going on, it does not describe what is really happening, in my opinion. The blades of the propeller are not the electrons, which are in a near-all-pervasive cloud, but the electromagnetic force (which is actually carried by photons). Fast and small things do manage to get through, yes.

FT, I've added a few things from what you say but I don't know what you mean about Harry. If a 4D person took *me* out of the universe, flipped me over and put me back down, I think I'd notice that my heart was on the wrong side of my body.

I have also added a little footnote, Skankyrich, about the measurement.

Well, BB, you will never find a bullet-proof analogy for anything happening in the quantum world anyways (otherwise what's the point of QM). The propeller thing was not meant as a direct picture of what is happening, just a hint to something that is - in an admittedly wild stretch of imagination - similar...

HELL

Hell, you're right!

Thanks for the analogy.

This is a great Entry, BB!

HELL

Another cracker BB

"So, if so much of walls are empty space"
I know you're going to tell me that these things are okay in quantum space, but in hootoo space that sentence fragment just doesn't sound right. How about 'So, if much of what walls are made from is empty space'?

'careering'
I'm so glad you didn't use that ghastly word 'careening'.

"Harry has no thickness, and he can only see things that are to his left or his right or things that are in front and behind him - ie, in directions that span the breadth and depth of your desk"
I would have said that Harry could see (and move) to his left and to his right, and up and down, ie the length and breadth of the piece of paper. I know that if he's moving left or right there will be objects in front of or behind him, but the way it's worded in the entry suggests to me that he's looking out of the paper - in a third dimension.


Scout

Dang it all, I knew there was summat else.

"and travel here at speeds close to the speed of light"
How about 'and travel here at velocities close to the speed of light', just to mix things up a bit?

Hey BB, Thanks for listening!

Try being Harry for a minute. Now go up to someone and shake hands.

You extended your right hand, didn't you?
If you were now taken out and 'flipped', your brain and physiology would still be oriented in the same way, but opposite of the rest of the universe. If you extended your right (flipped) hand, it would be perfectly natural to you; but, to everyone who remained un-flipped, it would appear that you were extending your left hand.

Simple?

Likewise, put your right hand over your heart. It should be resting to the left of center on your chest somewheres. If Harry did the same thing, he'd put 'his right hand' over the opposite side of his chest. To the onlooker, he'd look like a confused lefty. His senses would tell him that all was normal, but that everyone else in the universe had gone nuts, and had radical internal surgeries.

I read an essay in a SF magazine ages ago explaining 2D/3D worlds and how they'd look to each other; one example being pushing a 3D pencil through the 2D plane like a piece of paper. Confused the bejeezus out of me, but I think I get the basic gist. I think...

Thanks for the suggestions everyone, I've made appropriate changes, except FordsTowel - I'm afraid I still don't see what you mean. If we had two detached ears, then there is no way we can convert the left ear to a right ear. We recognise the difference between the left and right ears. But if the left ear were taken into hyperspace and flipped, and then put back, I think we'd notice that we now had two right ears. I don't think our 'handedness' would behave any differently. Are you saying that our brains would consider our former right hand to be our now hyperspatially-flipped left hand, and vice versa? If so, then it is the objective standpoint that I am taking in my article - we are not Harry; we are onlookers.

Incidentally, if a 2D person walked around a Moebius strip, their organs would be reversed in the same way.

Absolutely spot on, in regard to the Mobius Strip. Tis a good thing that there isn't a 3D version in our general existence, eh?

I've got another suggestion, of a way to visualize what I was trying to communicate. Try taking a piece of tissue paper and drawing three symmetrically shaped human figure outlines on it. Label their hands R and L (and put a heart on one side of their chests, for good measure).

Then, flip the paper and trace everything, so that you even have a reversed R and L on figures with opposite side hearts. Got it?

Now, carefully cut out one figure (we'll call HIM Harry), and flip him over, taping him back in place. You'll see that Harry has his R and L hands reversed in relation to the others (of course).

But, Harry, if he hasn't been aware of the flipping, will feel that he has not changed; and he won't have CHANGED, he was just flipped. From the opposite side, of the plane on which he exists, he will still think of HIS right as THE right, and HIS left as THE left. Everyone else, TO HIM, will appear to have been flipped. It's all relative, you know.

Help at all??

Good entry

I read the first few paragraphs and I was so moved I tried to walk through the wall. Unfortunately, as I missed the doorway completely, I broke my nose. That encounter with the brick-and-mortar world, while not exactly pleasant, has given me just the time-out I needed to finish reading your terrific piece.

I love it!

However, I'd like to take exception to Oojakapiv's suggested repair of the "if...walls...space" phrase. IMHO, it's much less comfortable now than before. I suggest (and please take it as just that: a suggestion) you simply make the refereces in the sentence singular and avoid the whole mess, to wit:

So, if much of any 'solid' wall is actually empty space, then why can we not walk through it?

Just a thought. Do what you will, BB. This is a great entry!


m

Hi BB
A damn fine wee entry.
Lets face it, dimensions and general physics are a total quagmire of conceptual imagery and mathematics that people attend universitys for years in order to understand, let alone further the understanding of.

And yet somehow you managed to get it into an understandable-to-laypersons entry, with useful tips on how to achieve it practically, even if it does take a while.

There is little i think you can do to improve it, unless it is on the hard numbers you list such as atomic dimensions, and i'm pretty sure you're in the ballpark with them.

Good use of humour there too, not too silly, not too droll, a nice touch of dry wit with a splash of soda and lemon slice.

hope it gets added to the guide.