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Dimension
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Dimension
Dimension (from
Latin "measured out") is, in essence, the number of
degrees of freedom available for movement in a space. (In common usage, the
dimensions of an object are the
measurements that define its
shape and size. That usage is related to, but different from, what this
article is about.)
For example, the space in which we live appears to be
3-dimensional. We can move up, north or west, and movement in any other
direction can be expressed in terms of just these three. Moving down is the same
as moving up a negative amount. Moving northwest is merely a combination of
moving north and moving west.
Some theories predict that the space we live in has in fact
many more dimensions (frequently 10, 11 or 26) but that the universe measured
along these additional dimensions is subatomic in size. See
string theory.
Time is frequently referred to as the "fourth dimension";
time is not the fourth dimension of space, but rather of
spacetime. This does not have a Euclidean geometry, so temporal directions
are not entirely equivalent to spatial dimensions. A
tesseract is an example of a four-dimensional object.
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