THE VIDEO SHELF · higher dimensions
Cosmos - Carl Sagan - 4th Dimension
A segment from Carl Sagan's original Cosmos explaining the fourth spatial dimension through analogy with a two-dimensional world and shadow projection.
Why HN readers recommended it
HN recommends it as the clearest intuitive introduction to thinking about a fourth dimension.
This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.
Video & recommendation details
- Creator / channel
- carlsagandotcom
- Topic
- higher dimensions
- Format
- lecture
- Level
- general
- HN recommenders in dataset
- 3
- HN mentions in dataset
- 7
- Recommendation years in dataset
- 2014–2025
These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.
From the original HN conversations
Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.
Good answer, a 4th dimension and the shadow projection analogy is brilliantly exemplified by Carl Sagan in this popular video: [VIDEO]
lgl on Hacker News · 2021-04
In Does the Universe Have Higher Dimensions? Part 1For those trying to wrap their heads around this ... I find this segment by Carl Sagan from the original Cosmos to be pretty well presented on the topic: [VIDEO]
CodeCube on Hacker News · 2014-02
In 4D Tesseract: Fourth Dimension GameIn 3 dimensional space, you can’t. Draw a square on paper. The lines will be orthogonal. Draw a cube. The third dimension won’t be orthogonal. It can’t be. But, that doesn’t mean a third dimension doesn’t exist or can’t exist. The same thing happens with …
travisjungroth on Hacker News · 2024-10
In Counterintuitive Properties of High Dimensional Space (2018)
Summaries, classifications and recommendation records are from the HackerTube source dataset. Read about this library and its limitations.