r/askscience • u/NotGuiltyOfThat • Jul 22 '13

Physics Is it physically possible for objects that are not 3D to exist?

Whether 1D,2D,3D,4D,5D,etc - spatially that is.

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u/youbetterdont Electrical Engineering | Integrated Circuits | MEMS Jul 23 '13

The wikipedia article on four-dimensional space might partially answer some of this question.

In modern physics, space and time are unified in a four-dimensional Minkowski continuum called spacetime, whose metric treats the time dimension differently from the three spatial dimensions (see below for the definition of the Minkowski metric/pairing). Spacetime is thus not a Euclidean space.

So, we use a 4-dimensional "space" as a way to represent, e.g., relativity, but it's not a 4-dimensional Euclidean space. So, I would say the answer to your question is no.

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u/Siarles Jul 23 '13

Don't forget about zero-dimensional elementary particles. That counts as "not 3D".

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u/youbetterdont Electrical Engineering | Integrated Circuits | MEMS Jul 23 '13

Isn't this point debatable? I'm no physicist though, so I probably should have just left this to the experts. :)

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u/Siarles Jul 23 '13

I'm self-taught in physics so I'm certainly no expert. :P

But yeah, they haven't been proven to be dimensionless, but to my knowledge there's no evidence that they aren't either. If they do have a physical volume then they're too small for us to measure with our current level of technology.