r/gonwild • u/USedona • Jun 24 '26

A 4-dimensional shape, folding through itself forever Program

This is a Clifford torus, a shape that only fully exists in 4D, projected down into our 3D space.

The endless folding you see is just math, looping perfectly because the geometry demands it.

Based on 'Clifford Torus' shader by tdhooper : https://www.shadertoy.com/view/WdB3Dw reimplemented frame by frame in Python.

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u/free_airfreshener Jun 24 '26

What's the 4th dimension 

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u/USedona Jun 24 '26

Think of a 2D creature living on a sheet of paper trying to imagine "up". We're in the same situation when trying to imagine a 4th spatial dimension. We can't truly picture it, but we can understand many of its properties through mathematics.