In the quantum
universe, there's
an undiscovered frontier
where the laws of our world
give way to the ones that apply
on the tiniest scale we know.
They're divorced from
our everyday experience.
How can you think
about a world that
has different rules than ours?
It's not easy.
That's why I want to
take you to this place
where it's not only possible
to make such a leap.
It's mandatory.
It's a world very much like
our own except in one respect.
[ominous music]
It just happens to be
missing a spatial dimension--
the third one.
In order to venture
into the quantum cosmos,
we have to be able to
imagine another dimension.
That's very hard to do.
It's much easier to wrap
your mind around a world
that's missing one of
the three dimensions
that we take for granted.
The beings of the world we're
about to enter have only two.
This world was first imagined
by a man named Edwin Abbott.
Everyone and everything here
and everyone they know and love
is flat.
Their houses are flat.
Some are squares.
Others are triangles.
Some have more complex shapes--
say, octagons.
But all are completely flat.
They scurry about on foot
or in little vehicles,
in and out of their
flat buildings,
busy with their flat lives.
Everyone on this world
has width and length
but no height whatsoever.
These flatworlders know about
left/right and forward/back.
But have no hint, not an
inkling, about up/down,
except for one tiny group--
the mathematicians who
imagined something more.
The mathematicians dream of
a world in three dimensions,
but it's too hard for
most of the flatworlders
to think about.
The mathematician says,
listen, it's really very easy.
We all know left/right.
We all know forward/back.
So let's just imagine another
dimension at right angles
to the other two.
But the flatworlders say,
what are you talking about?
At right angles
to the other two?
Everybody knows that there
can only be two dimensions.
Go ahead, wise guy.
Show us that third dimension.
Where is it?
So the mathematician
draws a picture.
Poor teacher.
Nobody listens to
mathematicians.
[electronic music]
Every creature on
flatworld sees its Fellows
as merely short lines,
which are the nearest
sides of their oblong bodies.
But the insides of a
flatworlder are forever
mysterious unless exposed
by some terrible accident
or autopsy.
And then one day, we came along.
Hello?
How are you?
Hi.
I'm a visitor from
the third dimension.
Hello?
I feel sorry for the little guy.
To him, it appears
that my greeting
is emanating from
his own flat body,
an alien voice from within.
That's because nothing
can come from above.
There is no above in this world.
A three-dimensional
creature like me
can only exist on
flatworld where my feet
touch the surface of the plane.
Sorry, little guy.
I know how weird
this must be for you.
Don't worry.
You're on a perfectly safe
trip to a third dimension.
Nothing's going to harm you.
But this is your chance to
see a whole new perspective
on where you live.
At first, our
flatworlder can make
no sense of what is happening.
It's utterly outside the
realm of flatworld experience.
But eventually, he
realizes that he's
viewing flatworld from a
totally new vantage point--
above.
Now, he can see
into closed rooms.
He can see into
his flat fellows.
This unprecedented
three-dimensional view
of his two-dimensional
universe is devastating.
Traveling to another dimension
provides as an incidental
benefit a kind of X-ray vision.
Just as the flat world
houses can have no roofs,
their inhabitants
can have no sky,
because that sky could only
exist in a third dimension.
Little guy has suffered enough.
I'm going to put him down.
From the point of
view of its spouse,
this flatworlder
has distressingly
disappeared then
unaccountably materialized
from out of nowhere.
[ominous music]
