A Wrinkle in Time - Tesseract Concept

Tesseract Concept

In mathematics, a tesseract is a four-dimensional shape (hypercube) that, when represented in three dimensions, looks, e.g., like a cube inside of a cube with spokes connecting the corners of the two cubes together. When representing a tesseract in a three-dimensional picture, the fourth dimension is depicted as the one geometric object being displaced and having different size relative to the other (as opposed to the three spatial dimensions, whose magnitudes are measured right-to-left, forward-to-backward and up-to-down). In the novel, the tesseract functions more or less like what in modern science-fiction is called a space warp or a wormhole, a portal from one area of space to another which is possible through the bending of the structure of the space-time continuum. A similar concept occurs in Frank Herbert's Dune novel where it is called the Holtzman effect.