In a revolutionary step, a large team of mathematicians are starting work on a “periodic table” of all the possible shapes in the universe across three, four and five dimensions. Taking inspiration from the classic periodic table of chemical elements, this table will link all these multidimensional shapes in relation to their functionality.
At the end of the three-year project, the team from Britain, Australia, Japan and Russia is hoping to reveal this directory that can be used as an important reference tool for calculations and other research in areas such as computer vision, number theory and theoretical physics.
“In our project we are looking for the basic building blocks of shapes. You can think of these basic building blocks as atoms, and think of larger shapes as molecules. The challenge is to understand how properties of the larger shapes depend on the atoms that they are made from. In other words, we want to build a theory of chemistry for shapes,” explained Dr Tom Coates, a leading researcher from the Department of Mathematics at Imperial College London.
The idea is to document and analyse these “building block” shapes that involve dimensions that cannot be seen in the conventional sense in the physical world. The mathematicians will work out the equations that describe each shape in an attempt to understanding their geometric properties and find out how they relate to one another to make bigger complex shapes.