Superstring theory requires a lot of extra dimensions, and the crews of various spaceships tend to zip around through the fourth dimension from time to time.
It occurs to me that, just as a 3D extruder can extrude things (like aluminium sections) which have useful 2D profiles, a 4D extruder could extrude, say, teapots or complete car bodies. These extrusions could then be sliced up into individual 3D objects.
MaxCo. is considering patenting this idea, in anticipation of the fourth dimension.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Mar 15 2012 //teapots are not made from metal. Not ever.// http://www.google.c...iT4zsC4rO0QWqzI2qCAon the other hand... [Loris, Mar 15 2012] I thought 3 Dish was a square meal.-- xandram, Mar 15 2012 Would it not just always extrude clocks? - time being the 4th dimension.-- xenzag, Mar 15 2012 Well, if you're going to be picky... I was confining myself to the traditional space dimensions.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Mar 15 2012 Clocks have nothing to do with Time; in fact, they make a mockery of it.
<at this point, [The Alterother] manifests just enough self- restraint to keep from launching into another of his wierd half-formed intuitive theories concerning the nature of reality>-- Alterother, Mar 15 2012 Mismatch between title & idea. 3D extruders well baked.-- pocmloc, Mar 15 2012 Also, teapots are not made from metal. Not ever.-- pocmloc, Mar 15 2012 //Also, teapots are not made from metal. Not ever.//
Taking that statement at face value - what else do we know besides metal which is extruded?
Pasta.
Are the teapots made of pasta?-- Loris, Mar 15 2012 PVC and other plastics, certain ceramic compounds, pet food and other kibble, fiber-pulp products both synthetic and natural...-- Alterother, Mar 15 2012 //Also, teapots are not made from metal. Not ever.// Ah yes, you're right. I was thinking of stainless steel, silver and all those other famous non-metals.
But imagine the sheer aesthetic joy of seeing a smooth continuous 4D ribbon of teapots emerging from the strangely twisted nozzle! Imagine the sheer profits attainable by just slicing this ribbon up into individual, perfectly-formed teapots! Moreover, the same extruder could make teapots of any size, simply by adjusting the intervals at which the 4th-dimension blade sliced the extrusion.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Mar 15 2012 See category-- pocmloc, Mar 15 2012 // a smooth continuous 4D ribbon of teapots //
<frantically flicks through contract looking for Sanity Clause>-- 8th of 7, Mar 15 2012 +1 for blowing my mind. Physicists might say those extra dimensions are "too small" to use, but I'm sure there's a solution involving doughnut-shaped black holes.-- sninctown, Mar 15 2012 //a smooth continuous 4D ribbon of teapots//
Actually, that should have read "a smooth continuous 4D ribbon of teapot"-- MaxwellBuchanan, Mar 15 2012 alternatively of course is to get a tiny teapot and use 4D water.-- FlyingToaster, Mar 15 2012 That's fine until you spill boiling water all inside yourself.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Mar 15 2012 //sliced// Why? Wouldn't this work just as well if it were left intact?-- mouseposture, Mar 15 2012 Because you'd have one teapot hugely extended in the 4th dimension, which would be unweildly. It would also take a lot of tea to fill it.
The aim is to create a continuous extrusion, much as aluminium profile is extruded and chopped into convenient lengths far more cheaply than casting or forging individual pieces.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Mar 15 2012 //It would also take a lot of tea to fill it.// If that's true, then your chopped teapots will leak tea into the fourth dimension.
//unwieldy// You just have to crumple 3-D spacetime so that all the places requiring teapots are adjacent to each other. Then it's not unwieldy at all.-- mouseposture, Mar 15 2012 I believe the solution we're looking for would be a klein teapot.-- Alterother, Mar 16 2012 Certainly not. It would leak badly, since its inside is the same as its outside. Also, you couldn't fill it, since it would have zero volume.-- mouseposture, Mar 16 2012 But it would simultaneously have infinite volume, presuming that the rest of the Universe were completely filled with tea leaves and boiling water ...-- 8th of 7, Mar 16 2012 Thank you, enemy mine, I was trying to figure out how to explain that elegantly. Also, the tea would would always come out hot and fresh, because it would essentially be the same tea you originally put in, no matter how 'long' it's in there and how 'much' you pour out.
What I mean to say is that, if you fill the klein teapot with its presumed volume of hot water and tea leaves, the universe as presumed to contain and be contained within _will_ be filled with hot water and tea leaves. Forever.-- Alterother, Mar 16 2012 That's going to give Stephen Hawking something to think about.-- 8th of 7, Mar 16 2012 Doesn't every 3D object already come with it's reality assigned 4th dimension component?-- wjt, Mar 18 2012 Is a quantum-entangled shotglass both half-full and half-empty at the same time ?-- FlyingToaster, Mar 18 2012 The whole raison d'etre of shotglasses is that they are either full or empty. The transition between the two states should occur in the Planck time and be represented by the Heaviside step function.-- 8th of 7, Mar 18 2012 //reality assigned 4th dimension component//
<PeterCook>Yes. The interesting fact about the fourth dimension is that the people in charge assign it.</PC>-- pertinax, Mar 18 2012 Extrude 4-D material through a 3-D hole for a 4-D ribbon that can be sliced into teapots.
What does 4 dimensional ceramic look like anyway?-- Voice, Mar 19 2012 That depends very much on the shape of the 3D hole.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Mar 19 2012 Well ... try to visualise a spherical tesseract made of fused silica, rotated by 90 degrees in each of 4 orthogonal adjacent Riemann planes.
Got that ? Good. It's nothing like that at all.-- 8th of 7, Mar 19 2012 I'm reminded of Sir Terry's 'The Lost Continent', specifically the 4-dimensional cave drawings that show animals not just as they are but also as they always have been and will be.-- Alterother, Mar 19 2012 //try to visualise a spherical tesseract//
The closest you could get to visualizing a 4D teapot extruder would be to envisage a solid metal die containing a teapot-shaped cavity (complete with the core, of course).
The feed (and the exit of the extruded teapots) happens along the 4th axis of the system. The easiest way to visualize it is to imagine an infinite number of egg-timers, with their waists populating the entire space in the mould.
It might make commercial sense to ship the complete extrusion to its country of destination, rather than dicing it into individual teapots at the point of extrusion, since many bulk carriers charge by cubic capacity rather than weight (let along quartic capacity).
Further shipping economies could be made by producing two extrusions - one inward and one outward. These two extrusions would nest nicely, allowing twice the amount of teapot to be packaged in a given cubic volume.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Mar 19 2012 //the exit of the extruded teapots) happens along the 4th axis of the system// The problem with this is that the completed items end up somewhere off along the 4th dimension rather than here, which is not so convenient. It's like me saying, I'll give you a tiger if you like? And you say, why, yes I would like, and I reply, here it is, oh actually it's in Africa.-- pocmloc, Mar 19 2012 A piffling problem. Teapots are fairly simple to move. In practice, rather than laying the extrusion down and dicing it (which would leave the teapots distributed over a distance), it would be easier to move the extrusion past a fixed dicing blade, so that they are all in the same place afterwards.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Mar 19 2012 I'm still obsessing over the idea of 4D tea that runs through several parallel universes: make a small pot that serves many, and whichever universe uses the last bit has to make a new batch.-- FlyingToaster, Mar 19 2012 I remember this from the pants thing. (update: [mb] suggested dimensionally novel pants at idea: Trousers based upon the recirculating washroom towel principle) actually this could be the biggest thing since atheism.
I have the impression that the form of the world I perceive is rather like the continuously group modified (world being) at the Zelazny amber sci fi writings. If you can create an actual human producible object that varies continually, controllably across a different dimension, then it supports this other nonreligious view of creating a fossil record along with actual animals simultaneously as a result of just rotating a kind of graph of beingness. [MB] here could create not just continuous pants, yet create preexisting historical pants at their energy minima local contexts, like fossils. The really nifty thing would be days of future pants at present.
so Im thinking about how to actually make it function, i think. Anyway I think I once figured out how to fake the fossil record with something similarish. that is like, if god made everything, what dimensionality would be used to create a fossil record contemporaneous with actual existing creatures. Changing the angle of that creature constructor would vary the fossil record simultaneous to the newly different living creatures.-- beanangel, Mar 19 2012 //Days of future pants// That is a title in search of a novel, if ever there was one.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Mar 19 2012 [beanangel]: if you can find a copy, read 'Strata' by Terry Pratchett. It's a very early work.-- Alterother, Mar 20 2012 [mb] this differs from superstring theory technology yet could create 4d adustable pants
one approach to chronoextruded materials is to immanentize quantum glider guns at a fog.
Rather the way particles condense material at a cloud chamber as they zing their way, the creation of quantum linked photons or even atom groups could act like automata glider guns suddenly coalescing matter at multiple quantum linked places simultaneously to create multiple copies of an item from a data file
So compare a sooper toobular bubble having a shape from a wand, unformed matter fog would drift through an area continually producing multiple materialized quantum imaged thingies, along with the simultaneity you also have the normal chronological path length of the automata glider gun as well as the specific automata rules that describe how much spread n move the immanetized quantum glider guns actually do.
If you did make a photoncaster like that it would actually make, like 3d pants, across a duration Where Changing One Of The Pants Would Change All Of The Pants regardless of their actual moment of instantiation its just that they are fog pants until you spray fixative on them.
also [mb] kind of like you say, you could (nonlinked photon) weave or unweave the nonlinked parts (area) of each quantum linked glider guns actual local area to create "interior" variation that might otherwise be "impossible"
The square of the distance lightspread rule as well as the instantiation of glider guns also supports the the same extruder could make things of any size simply by adjusting the intervals at which the 4th-dimension "unlink" function said each item was complete
so you have chronological creation latitude with immanentization as well as customization-- beanangel, Mar 20 2012 I see words but no meaning... but thank you nevertheless.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Mar 20 2012 //I see words but no meaning// - I was sitting here thinking, "This sounds like a description of the world where [beanangel] lives." Then, he saunters in and states //I remember this from the pants thing.// Well, I guess... If you see a person out wandering around who appears to have no pants, you can now just assume that the person really does, or will, have pants, right after they are immanentized, so it's no big deal, pay it no mind, g'day, fine weather we're having, isn't it?; oh, yes, top-notch, 'cept for the Thames crawled up the side of my flat again last night; Ooh, blimey, sorry mate, that's not a good biscuit - say, you have any idea how I get this brick out of my head?; Oh, that's a nice one, adobe, makes grit on your teeth, yep, all you have to do is just lean away from when it came and it'll missed you. Cheerio, haven't they?-- lurch, Mar 20 2012 //I remember this from the pants thing.//
I know I'm stepping out on a limb, but [marked-for- tagline].-- Alterother, Mar 20 2012 <stealthily applies saw to limb onto which [TheAlterother] has just stepped>-- 8th of 7, Mar 20 2012 [b] You're talking about the collapse of an object existing in a large width of timeline, all into a smaller width.
So if the entire large width started off wearing, say, designer jeans from the 80's, at the end of the operation, the person-sheaf to either side of the middle would find themselves pantsless, and the thin middle-sheaf would be enrobed in a sturdy set of original Levis which would probably be on fire too, but you can't have everything.-- FlyingToaster, Mar 20 2012 Hence the term, "The Trousers Of Time" ...-- 8th of 7, Mar 20 2012 A concept grounded in Norse mythology... interesting.-- Alterother, Mar 20 2012 I think that if we're going to carry on using "immanentize", we need at least a lemma to show it's a real word.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Mar 20 2012 actually I recently read at softpedia that 114 AMU molecules are observable as waves with a double slit procedure. Now think of [mb]s idea with a huge plurality of unobserved 114 AMU polyethylene double slit waves overlapping each other. observe them from just the right angle you get overlapping mer fields to create a polymer thousands of AMU big, with durable physicality, do this enough, you've got immanentized pants-- beanangel, Mar 28 2012 Uh-oh. I was suggesting "don't look". So you're saying we have to look, or the pants won't show up?-- lurch, Mar 28 2012 random, halfbakery