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Direct projection of 3-sphere into 3D space and covered with surface grid, showing structure as stack of 3D spheres (2-spheres) In mathematics, a hypersphere or 3-sphere is a 4-dimensional analogue of a sphere, and is the 3-dimensional n-sphere. In 4-dimensional Euclidean space, it is the set of points equidistant from a fixed central point.
In geometry, a point group in three dimensions is an isometry group in three dimensions that leaves the origin fixed, or correspondingly, an isometry group of a sphere.It is a subgroup of the orthogonal group O(3), the group of all isometries that leave the origin fixed, or correspondingly, the group of orthogonal matrices.
In the extrinsic 3-dimensional picture, a great circle is the intersection of the sphere with any plane through the center. In the intrinsic approach, a great circle is a geodesic; a shortest path between any two of its points provided they are close enough. Or, in the (also intrinsic) axiomatic approach analogous to Euclid's axioms of plane ...
A 1-dimensional thing is a line, and 2-dimensional thing is a plane. For these low numbers, mathematicians have proven the maximum possible kissing number for spheres of that many dimensions.
Another type of sphere arises from a 4-ball, whose three-dimensional surface is the 3-sphere: points equidistant to the origin of the euclidean space R 4. If a point has coordinates, P ( x , y , z , w ) , then x 2 + y 2 + z 2 + w 2 = 1 characterizes those points on the unit 3-sphere centered at the origin.
This is the set of points in 3-dimensional Euclidean space found exactly one unit away from the origin. It is called the 2-sphere, S 2, for reasons given below. The same idea applies for any dimension n; the equation x 2 0 + x 2 1 + ⋯ + x 2 n = 1 produces the n-sphere as a geometric object in (n + 1)-dimensional space. For example, the 1 ...
The two-dimensional analogue of the Poincaré conjecture says that any two-dimensional topological manifold which is closed and connected but non-homeomorphic to the two-dimensional sphere must possess a loop which cannot be continuously contracted to a point. (This is illustrated by the example of the torus, as above.)
The ordinary sphere is a 2-sphere, because it is a 2-dimensional surface which is embedded in 3-dimensional space. In topology, the n-sphere is an example of a compact topological manifold without boundary. A topological sphere need not be smooth; if it is smooth, it need not be diffeomorphic to the Euclidean sphere (an exotic sphere).