We live in a 3-dimensional world. (At least, we’re pretty sure we do.) But could worlds with more dimensions exist? And what would a 4- or 5-dimensional world look like? Naturally, Plus magazine turns to mathematics and H.P. Lovecraft to answer these burning questions.
According to the early 20th century horror writer H.P. Lovecraft, these higher dimensions do indeed exist, and are home to all manner of evil creatures. In Lovecraft’s mythology, the most terrible of these beings goes by the name of Yog-Sothoth. Interestingly, on the rare occasions that Yog-Sothoth appears in the human realm, it takes the form of “a congeries of iridescent globes… stupendous in its malign suggestiveness”.
Lovecraft had some interest in mathematics, and indeed used ideas such as hyperbolic geometry to lend extra strangeness to his stories (as Thomas Hull has discussed in Math Horizons). But he could not have known how fortunate was the decision to represent Yog-Sothoth in this manner. Strange spheres really are the keys to higher dimensional worlds, and our understanding of them has increased greatly in recent years. Over the last 50 years a subject called differential topology has grown up, and revealed just how alien these places are.
Via Cliff Pickover
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Illustration of Yog-Sothoth by Dominique Signoret, used via CC
