Four-dimensional space

Today every schoolboy knows that the space in which a person exists is three-dimensional, that is, he has three dimensions: length, width and height. But what is Four-dimensional space? If we explore not only the spatial position of the body, but also how it changes in time, that is, the processes that occur in three-dimensional space, there is one more coordinate - time. Four-dimensional space and consists of three spatial and one time coordinate. In this case, physicists and philosophers talk about a single space-time continuum. Time and space are interrelated. In essence, they manifest themselves as different sides of four-dimensional space-time.

Four-dimensional space as the unity of space and time has an interesting property, which is a consequence of A. Einstein's theory of relativity . It consists in the fact that with the speed of the body approaching the light one, time flows more slowly on it, and the body itself decreases in size.

Imagine a four-dimensional space Is not easy enough. When we were drawing flat geometric figures at school , we did not experience any special difficulties - they were two-dimensional (they had a width and a length). It was more difficult to draw and represent three-dimensional figures - cones, pyramids, cylinders and others. And to imagine four-dimensional figures is rather difficult even for mathematicians and physicists.

Of course, the concept of "four-dimensional space" is necessary to get used to. Theoretical physicists apply the concept of four-dimensional space-time as a tool in calculations, develop in this world four-dimensional geometry.

The theory of A. Einstein says that gravitational bodies contribute to the curvature of four-dimensional space-time around themselves. It is not easy to visualize the "usual" space-time, and the twisted one is even more difficult. But physics-theoreticians or mathematicians do not need to imagine anything. Curvature for them means changing the geometric properties of bodies or figures. For example, the length of a circle refers to its diameter on the plane as 3.14, and on a curved surface this is not quite so. Theoretically, the Russian mathematician N. Lobachevsky theoretically proposed the possibility of curving the four-dimensional space in the early nineteenth century. In the middle of the nineteenth century, the German mathematician B. Riemann began to explore the "curved" spaces of not only three dimensions, but also four, and then with any number of dimensions. Since then, the geometry of a curved space is called non-Euclidean. The founders of non-Euclidean geometry did not know exactly under what conditions their geometry might be useful. The mathematical apparatus that they created was subsequently used in the formulation of general relativity theory of general relativity.

A. Einstein pointed to an interesting effect on time: in a powerful gravitational field, time will flow more slowly than outside it. This means that the time on the Sun will go slower than on Earth, since the gravitational force of the Sun is substantially greater than the gravitational force of the Earth. For the same reason, clocks at a certain height above the Earth go a little faster than on the surface of our planet.

Of great importance for the whole of science are such time-discovered features of the scientist as slowing it down next to neutron stars, stopping time in "black holes", hypothetical possibility of "transition" of time to space and the reverse process.

Outside the gravitational field Appears So Called Free space - an environment in which the gravitational force on the body either does not work at all, or acts very weakly compared to the earth's gravity. The stars are in outer space, and most of it is free space.