Hypersphere

Template:Hypersphere volume and surface area graphs.svg In geometry of higher dimensions, a hypersphere is the set of points at a constant distance from a given point called its centre. It is a manifold of codimension one—that is, with one dimension less than that of the ambient space.

As the hypersphere's radius increases, its curvature decreases. In the limit, a hypersphere approaches the zero curvature of a hyperplane. Hyperplanes and hyperspheres are examples of hypersurfaces.

The term hypersphere was introduced by Duncan Sommerville in his 1914 discussion of models for non-Euclidean geometry.^[1] The first one mentioned is a 3-sphere in four dimensions.

Some spheres are not hyperspheres: If S is a sphere in E^m where m < n, and the space has n dimensions, then S is not a hypersphere. Similarly, any n-sphere in a proper flat is not a hypersphere. For example, a circle is not a hypersphere in three-dimensional space, but it is a hypersphere in the plane.

References

^ Duncan Sommerville (1914) Elements of Non-Euclidean Geometry, page 193 via Internet Archive

v t e Dimension
Dimensional spaces	Vector space Euclidean space Affine space Projective space Free module Manifold Algebraic variety Spacetime
Other dimensions	Krull Lebesgue covering Inductive Hausdorff Minkowski Fractal Degrees of freedom
Polytopes and shapes	Hyperplane Hypersurface Hypercube Hyperrectangle Demihypercube Hypersphere Cross-polytope Simplex Hyperpyramid
Dimensions by number	Zero One Two Three Four Five Six Seven Eight n-dimensions
See also	Hyperspace Codimension
Category

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Further reading