Customer Reviews

Surfing Through Hyperspace: Understanding Higher Universes in Six Easy Lessons

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1 star:		(3)

 

 

The four-dimensional world treated in this book is not the space-time of the theory of relativity, but the world with a fourth spatial direction different from all the directions of our normal three-dimensional space. A number of books on the fourth dimension had already been published. So, why did Pickover, an IBM researcher who published many popular books, write this book? He gives an answer in the preface: The main purpose of the book is to tell the reader the physical appearance of four-dimensional beings, what they can do in our world, and the religious implications of their penetration into our world, with a few simple formulas and computer programs to aid the understanding of the four- and more-dimensional spaces (those who are not interested in computing can easily skip them).

The author presents an SF story, in which an FBI agent, "you," gives personal lectures on hyperspace to his younger fellow agent Sally. Finally they both experience surfing into a four-dimensional world. Meanwhile the reader learns concepts and terms such as "hyperspheres," "tesseracts," "enantiomorphic," "extrinsic geometry," "quaternions," "nonorientable surfaces," etc. The author succeeds in achieving his aim rather well by the use of many illustrations and computer graphics, though he cites too much from Edwin Abbott's "Flatland" in early chapters and from Karl Heim's "Christian Faith and Natural Science" in later chapters.

The book has nine Appendixes (one is a list of SF stories and novels about the fourth dimension), "Notes" and "Further Readings" sections, and Addendum about recent publications dealing with parallel universes and cosmic topology. These are also interesting and informative. This is a good book especially for theologians, philosophers, artists, and general readers who like wild imaginations or computer experiments. To the serious reader who wants to know the implications of hyperspace in modern physics, I would like to recommend Michio Kaku's "Hyperspace."

Most people are not ready or willing to accept the idea of a fourth dimension, but, Pickover seems to actually live there a few months out of the year. He steps back into our realm only long enough to create another volume to help the rest of us understand the higher universes he's been traversing. Hyperspace is very thoughtfully researched and written with such talent the world has not seen before and may not see again. It contains just the right amount of imagination without being too speculative. Just enough science without being bogged down with math, and a story to help you understand where he wants to go without resorting to "technobabble". All of the visual ideas are accompanied by simple, easy to digest illustrations. I seriosly recommend this and any other Pickover books that enter your range of interest. I promise you will not be wasting your time or money and you will come away from your experience wiser and able to see the world in a wonderful new way.

Queen Victoria almost certainly would have been amused if she had thought to pick up a copy of Edwin Abbott's inventive story "Flatland" when it was first published in 1884. But it's unlikely that she would be amused at the degree to which Pickover has chosen to rehash all of the same ideas - and, not just once, but seeking to dress the same material up as different chapters over and over again. My goodness, there are only so many ways that one can say a three dimensional sphere projects as a circle in two dimensions. Therefore, a four dimensional hypershpere projects into three dimensions as a sphere. OK, OK - I got it the first time!

It's bad enough that Surfing Through Hyperspace barely rises above plagiarism. But Pickover has tried to tart the presentation up with a bizarre, pretentious narration that is also a simple rip off from Scully and Mulder of X-Files fame! This silly repetitious presentation borders on insulting to any intelligent reader who, after reading a couple or three chapters, will realize they would have been better off going to the store to buy the original item - Flatland.

Any other material that is beyond Flatland - wormholes, Many Worlds Theory, quantum mechanics and superluminal contact, to name a few examples - are explained more completely and more clearly in any number of other sources. I did briefly get excited when one chapter headed down a road that looked really promising - multidimensional variations on games like chess and monopoly; knights that weren't allowed to effectively jump into the 3rd dimension by leaping over men on the board; 3-D chess play inside an 8x8 cube; a chess board on a Möbius strip. Then Pickover pulled the ultimate cop out - "We leave exploration of these interesting variations as an exercise to the reader." For crying out loud, if I was a mathematician, a physicist or a game theorist, somehow I doubt I would have purchased the book in the first place!

Surfing Through Hyperspace promised a deeper understanding of higher dimensions but, for me, it was a profound disappointment.

You will nod with approval over this entertaining romp through the scientific and speculative world of higher (and lower!) dimensions. Written in Pickover's intensely engaging style, you will feel as though you've actually experienced the Fourth Dimension and other spacious realms.

You'll feel like you're in the midst of the action as X-Files-like FBI agents ask the same questions the reader would ask about how other dimensional beings would look. The witty text is highlighted with original photos, cartoons and graphics to aid the reader in visualizing these unseen dimensions. Surfing Through Hyperspace is a "must read" for everyone whose imagination seeks to exceed the boundaries of our 3-D space. You will even grow an extra brain!

April Pedersen

Once again, Clifford Pickover has taken an abstract and untangible subject and presented it in an entertaining and educational manner. In his most recent book, Surfing through Hyperspace, Cliff makes us ponder the possibility of higher spatial dimensions, what a 4D "person" would look like to us, what a 4D person can do (to us!), and how one can think of higher dimensions through the analogy of how we perceive 2D "people".

This book is appealing to anyone with an interest in expanding their mind. The book is suitable for everyone from the casual reader to experts in the field!

Superb introduction to the fourth dimension and models of the universe that require higher dimensions. Told with wit and humor. Great illustrations. Some computer recipes. I'm studying physics in college, but even my sister in high school liked most parts.

Book topics I liked best: string theory, evolution of 4-D beings, chess played on a Mobius strip, the Monopoly game played in higher dimensions, HyperDNA, optical aids for seeing higher universes, Max Tegmark's wild theories on the dimensionality of spacetime, the religious implications of higher dimensions, Salvador Dali and higher dimensions, and digestive systems in higher dimensions.

Of all the ideas that humans have developed, one of the most difficult is that of dimensions greater than three. Our minds are very effectively hard-wired to handle three dimensions in an extremely efficient way. Gigabytes of data arrive at our sensors every day and nearly all are processed with a minimum of effort. However, when we move up to the fourth dimension, that processing ability fails. The best explanations still derive from the classic piece of social satire, Flatland by Edwin Abbott Abbott. In that book, the relationship between a three dimensional being and a two dimensional being are examined.
The same approach is taken here, only Pickover uses the relationships between three and four dimensional creatures in the context of an FBI investigation that is similar to the X-Files television show. This approach works quite well as an explanation of the principles of the fourth dimension, although at times, there could have been less dialog and more explanation of the principles behind what is happening. However, there is no doubt that the episodic structure of the book will make it more interesting and readable for those who follow video exploits.
Humans have given their gods many forms, abilities and names in the years since the first appearance of such a thought. Independent of the context of the description of the superior being, it is clear that such creatures cannot exist in three dimensions. It may be well said that, `in higher dimensions, all things are possible." Well in this book, you will learn some of what that means.

Perhaps lots of you remember this phrase from the TV series "X-Files"; well, let me tell you something, Pickover did it again! Supporting the main story of the book in some kind of "X-Files" chapter, Dr. Clifford Pickover bring to us this hyper-interesting text. For many centuries, the great philosophers and scientists of the world thought that our lives were confined to a 3D (three dimensional) space, namely, only with length, breadth and thickness. These people thought that it was impossible to conceive a 4D world (fourth dimensional) because one cannot arrange a fourth axis at a right angle respect to the well-known X, Y and Z axis; and, if nobody could fix the problem in a logic way, it turns out that a fourth dimension might contradict nature. This manner of thinking affected the evolution of science in many aspects. The human being had to learn that NOTHING HAPPENS IN CONTRADICTION TO NATURE, ONLY IN CONTRADICTION TO WHAT WE KNOW OF IT. Luckily, men like Minkowski and Einstein had minds that were out of this world and thanks to them, and many others of course, the so-called fourth dimension was accepted as a part of the Minkowski's Space-time; a Space-time that was warped in the upcoming years by the Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. Since that time, many books about the fourth dimension have been written in order to make public the yet ill-understood knowledge of higher dimensional worlds. The book now featured by Dr. Pickover makes a great approach to that goal. The text presents the basic theory of higher dimensions in a way easily understandable to anyone. I just love the Pickover's manner of writing because he always finds the exact blend of humor, fiction and knowledge. The book is plenty of diagrams, draws and representations that make the reading something very delightful and, as usual, it has the computer code of almost every computer simulation. The text also presents many examples of 3D projections of 4D objects that help the reader to visualize the hyperspace, besides many mind-boggling puzzles and theological question. By the end, the author briefly explains some interesting theories related to the hyperspace; a dimension in which our space is embedded (and also curved) and where is possible that two points, far away in our 3D universe, come very closer, even communicate each other. This kind of cosmic bridge is known as a wormhole. If you want to learn more about wormholes and space travel using them, I recommend you "Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy" by Kip Thorne. That is an equations-free book and a good place to begin your hyper-adventure in the modern physics.

If you have realised that the concept of more than threeorthogonal spacial dimensions or directions is "lunatic fringe"do not be put off by the title of this book. There is a problem with language in that "dimension" is used for quantities like mass length and time, and is also used meaning orthogonal direction, up/down left/right or front/back. It is this linguistic problem that gives rise to concepts of "four dimensional space" that are really "lunatic fringe". However they are fun! The book will give you ammunition to argue the case against a space with four length directions whilst at the same time entertain you with ideas as to what the universe would be like if there were higher spacial "dimensions" we could not perceive.

It is interesting that humans can think about spaces and indeed whole universes that do not exist around us. Dr Pickover will help you to try and visualise such things as universes with four or even more spacial orthogonal directions and how physics and biology would work in such universes. Would electromagnetic radiation be possible? Would sound be possible? Could life that digests foods evolve? It isn't necessarily so, as you will see.

When you read this book you can be "god" for a short while creating whole new universes within your head, and explore their properties. There are even some short computer programs to type in and try, if you are proficient at C, BASIC and so on. You will learn far more than mere folklore about the fringes of science and fiction.

For my fellow potato-heads: Good book. Pickover is obviously a very smart man (has website with riduculous-smarty-pants stuff on it) who has a knack for making difficult topics readable. He feeds the reader enough hard science references to challenge the mind, and then surrounds them with a "cute" story. It makes the book easily readable, yet thought-provoking.

I found this book most useful as a launching pad to other mathematics-science-astronomy texts. (Flatland, Fantasia Mathematica, and Brief History of Time tie in closely.)

For those who have not yet considered interaction with 4th Dimensional beings...or with alternative visions of your "God" I recommend this book. Hardcover is nice, but you might be happier buying the soft cover (cheaper).