Clifford Pickover: "Is it hard to imagine a universe with four dimensions in which we are constrained to 3 dimensions? Could there be some mechanism constraining us -- such as being stuck to a surface via adsorption? If we were stuck to some surface in this manner, then the way free 4-D beings could interact with us would be constrained by that surface.In our 3-D world, evolutionary mechanisms made us evolve into tubes. The earliest multi-celled sea creatures were tubes that could pump water through and pick up nutrients from the water as it went by. As life evolved, the primary structural differences involved the complexity of organs attached to the tube. We are still just tubes, but we carry a lot of that ancient sea around with us in the "inside" of a bag.In higher dimensions, the fraction of volume near the surface of a baglike form increases dramatically compared to 3-D forms. Heat dissipation and movement of nutrients and oxygen (most of the blood vessels uniformly distributed through the bag will be close to the surface too) may be strongly affected by the proximity of the volume to surface. How would this affect the evolution of life? Would primitive 4-D beings may evolve so that they digest on the outer surface, with other organs, like brains and hearts not involved with nutrient an oxygen acquisition, deep inside? The outer surface would be digestive and pulmonary, and contain sense organs and orifices for excretion and sex. Is this tendency more likely as the dimension of the space increased?.
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