In geometry, the tesseract is the four-dimensional analogue of the cube; the tesseract is to the cube as the cube is to the square. Just as the surface of the cube consists of six square faces, the hypersurface of the tesseract consists of eight cubical cells. The tesseract is one of the six convex regular 4-polytopes.

The tesseract is also called an eight-cell, C₈, (regular) octachoron, octahedroid,^[1] cubic prism, and tetracube.^[2] It is the four-dimensional hypercube, or 4-cube as a part of the dimensional family of hypercubes or "measure polytopes".^[3]

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word tesseract was coined and first used in 1888 by Charles Howard Hinton in his book A New Era of Thought, from the Greek τέσσερεις ακτίνες (téssereis aktines, "four rays"), referring to the four lines from each vertex to other vertices.^[4] In this publication, as well as some of Hinton's later work, the word was occasionally spelled "tessaract".

Geometry

The tesseract can be constructed in a number of ways. As a regular polytope with three cubes folded together around every edge, it has Schläfli symbol {4,3,3} with hyperoctahedral symmetry of order 384. Constructed as a 4D hyperprism made of two parallel cubes, it can be named as a composite Schläfli symbol {4,3} × { }, with symmetry order 96. As a 4-4 duoprism, a Cartesian product of two squares, it can be named by a composite Schläfli symbol {4}×{4}, with symmetry order 64. As an orthotope it can be represented by composite Schläfli symbol { } × { } × { } × { } or { }⁴, with symmetry order 16.

Since each vertex of a tesseract is adjacent to four edges, the vertex figure of the tesseract is a regular tetrahedron. The dual polytope of the tesseract is called the regular hexadecachoron, or sixteen-cell, with Schläfli symbol {3,3,4}, with which it can be combined to form the compound of tesseract and 16-cell.

The standard tesseract in Euclidean 4-space is given as the convex hull of the points (±1, ±1, ±1, ±1). That is, it consists of the points:

${\displaystyle \{(x_{1},x_{2},x_{3},x_{4})\in \mathbb {R} ^{4}\,:\,-1\leq x_{i}\leq 1\}}$

A tesseract is bounded by eight hyperplanes (x_i = ±1). Each pair of non-parallel hyperplanes intersects to form 24 square faces in a tesseract. Three cubes and three squares intersect at each edge. There are four cubes, six squares, and four edges meeting at every vertex. All in all, it consists of 8 cubes, 24 squares, 32 edges, and 16 vertices.

Projections to two dimensions

The construction of a hypercube can be imagined the following way:

• 1-dimensional: Two points A and B can be connected to a line, giving a new line segment AB.
• 2-dimensional: Two parallel line segments AB and CD can be connected to become a square, with the corners marked as ABCD.
• 3-dimensional: Two parallel squares ABCD and EFGH can be connected to become a cube, with the corners marked as ABCDEFGH.
• 4-dimensional: Two parallel cubes ABCDEFGH and IJKLMNOP can be connected to become a hypercube, with the corners marked as ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOP.

It is possible to project tesseracts into three- and two-dimensional spaces, similarly to projecting a cube into two-dimensional space.

Projections on the 2D-plane become more instructive by rearranging the positions of the projected vertices. In this fashion, one can obtain pictures that no longer reflect the spatial relationships within the tesseract, but which illustrate the connection structure of the vertices, such as in the following examples:

Parallel projections to 3 dimensions

As a configuration

The elements of a regular polytope can be expressed in a configuration matrix. Rows and columns reference vertices, edges, faces, and cells, with diagonal element their counts (f-vectors). The nondiagonal elements represent the number of row elements that are incident to the column element. The configurations for dual polytopes can be seen by rotating the matrix elements by 180 degrees.^[5][6]

${\displaystyle {\begin{bmatrix}{\begin{matrix}16&4&6&4\\2&32&3&3\\4&4&24&2\\8&12&6&8\end{matrix}}\end{bmatrix}}}$

Image gallery

Alternative projections

2D orthographic projections

Related complex polygon

The regular complex polytope ₄{4}₂, , in ${\displaystyle \mathbb {C} ^{2}}$ has a real representation as a tesseract or 4-4 duoprism in 4-dimensional space. ₄{4}₂ has 16 vertices, and 8 4-edges. Its symmetry is ₄[4]₂, order 32. It also has a lower symmetry construction, , or ₄{}×₄{}, with symmetry ₄[2]₄, order 16. This is the symmetry if the red and blue 4-edges are considered distinct.^[8]

Tessellation

The tesseract, along with all hypercubes, tessellates Euclidean space. The self-dual tesseractic honeycomb consisting of 4 tesseracts around each face has Schläfli symbol {4,3,3,4}. Hence, the tesseract has a dihedral angle of 90°.^[9]

Related polytopes and honeycombs

As a uniform duoprism, the tesseract exists in a sequence of uniform duoprisms: {p}×{4}.

The regular tesseract, along with the 16-cell, exists in a set of 15 uniform 4-polytopes with the same symmetry. The tesseract {4,3,3} exists in a sequence of regular 4-polytopes and honeycombs, {p,3,3} with tetrahedral vertex figures, {3,3}. The tesseract is also in a sequence of regular 4-polytope and honeycombs, {4,3,p} with cubic cells.

In popular culture

Since their discovery, four-dimensional hypercubes have been a popular theme in art, architecture, and fiction. Notable examples include:

• Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus), a 1954 oil painting by Salvador Dalí featuring a four-dimensional hypercube unfolded into a three-dimensional Latin cross.^[10]
• The Grande Arche, a monument and building near Paris, France, completed in 1989. According to the monument's engineer, Erik Reitzel, the Grande Arche was designed to resemble the projection of a hypercube.^[11]
• "And He Built a Crooked House", Robert Heinlein‘s 1940 science fiction story featuring a building in the form of a four-dimensional hypercube.^[12]
• Fez, a video game where one plays a character who can see beyond the two dimensions other characters can see, and must use this ability to solve platforming puzzles. Features "Dot," a tesseract who helps you navigate the world and tells you how to use abilities, fitting the theme of seeing beyond human perception of known dimensional space.^[13]

See also

• Mathematics and art