What is the Dimension of Swirling Lights?
In Dragon Ball Super: Broly, the clash between Gogeta and Broly
broke reality and forced the pair into a
Dimension of Strange Swirling Lights.
This setting was described in the
Broly Anime Comic as
super-dimensional several different
times. The kanji used here refers to
higher dimensional spaces (
spaces with extra dimensional axes).
What's the deal with that one interview regarding the Dimension of Swirling Lights?
The production team for the Broly movie
was interviewed on the film's special effects under an article from the official Dragon Ball Website. Here, it was declared that the team's purpose was to create
super-dimensional images with CGI technology.
It was stated that under the process of CGI, you'd normally use a reference image of a setting like the wilderness or sea to produce 3-dimensional imagery. This time however, they would model a space based on nothing that exists in real life as if it were a different dimension. The kanji used for "different dimension" in the article was
異空間, which directly means "different space" and seems to refer to an outside space with different laws. One of the main interpretations of [異空間] refers to higher dimensional spaces, though we can't make conclusions from that alone.
Later on however, they said that to portray this space in a 3-D format,
they expressed different dimensions using mathematical formulas as a model. Different dimension(s) [異次元] in the context of science and sci-fi refers to
worlds with dimensions distinct/different from the usual;
an idea that encompasses both a fantasy concept of alternate worlds and mathematical concepts of dimensions to denote a world that occupies a higher dimension.
Saying that CGI images are 'based on math' means nothing on its own since the whole process of animation uses linear algebra, calculus, physics, et cetera. The difference with this situation is that this space wasn't
based on mathematics necessarily, it
was mathematics. They said that
rather than modeling with a 3-dimensional shape exposed to color/size adjustment settings,
they used nothing but purely calculated mathematical formulas as models in and of themselves to generate these dimensions which are equivalent to a mathematical expression that human viewers couldn't comprehend.
I've also looked into the concept of "super-dimensional imagery" slightly.
This old computer science research article mentions such an idea under the context of representing 3-dimensional ground features effectively under the format of 2-dimensional imaging space.
This other article mentions the concept under the context of super-dimensional reconstruction, which is where they would reconstruct the 3-D structure of a stationary porous material (things like paper, cardboard, sponges, etc.) from a 2-dimensional reference image. It seems the idea of "super-dimensional imagery" consistently indicates representing something beyond the dimensional boundaries of imaging software in question, and of course, the team's goal was to represent super-dimensional imagery under 3-D imaging space. We don't need to think too hard, this is where occam's razor comes in handy.
I feel like people form the wrong conclusions from the article, so let's refer back to
these 4
scans I
posted above
in particular. Our takeaways are very simple.
- Standard modeling is explicitly a 3-dimensional process.
- They couldn't create this 3-dimensional image using said process.
- Instead, they used a different modeling technique involving mathematics that were used to create an incomprehensible space.
- Their result was a super-dimensional image.
It all circles back to the central question:
"what was different about this space that warranted its status as super-dimensional imagery?" Super-dimensional means higher dimensional space, super-dimensional imagery means imagery meant to depict something higher dimensional than its imaging space, and the team said multiple times that what made this space different from most CGI images is that it could not be constructed through standard 3-dimensional modeling and required an additional, intermediate process altogether.
Let's bring it all together now. They stated the Dimension of Swirling Lights couldn't be constructed with standard 3-D modeling, so they had to generate its environment by expressing the dimension(s) as mathematical formulas that you wouldn't expect humans to comprehend. This loaded statement seems to carry heavy connotations as far as higher mathematical dimensions go. For instance, with tesseracts (which represent higher dimensional space), their volume is
based on mathematical formulas, humans
can't generally comprehend
such expressions, and modeling them visually
is considered the equivalent of modeling abstruse mathematics in the third dimension. Not to mention, the first research link I provided explained "super-dimensional imagery" as something 3-dimensional portrayed in 2-dimensional imaging space while the second one explained "super-dimensional reconstruction" as creating 3-dimensional structures from 2-dimensional reference images: thus our takeaway is that the dimensions from the Broly movie were higher dimensional spaces that the movie production staff aimed to portray in the third dimension using CGI.
Where is the Dimension of Swirling Lights located?
It was stated that this dimension was reached by
distorting space-time,
breaching the limits of the universe,
tearing dimensional walls apart,
then "disintegrating" the dimension to leave it.
Their power was stated to be too much for the universe to handle. In Dragon Ball, "the universe"
refers to the living world more often than the macrocosm as a whole. It would definitely make more sense if the Dimension of Swirling Lights encompassed the living world [or at bare minimum, is an adjacent space-time] since breaking the living world's space-time fabric leads directly to it and back from it. Therefore, if the Dimension of Swirling Lights were a higher dimensional space, it would be most reasonable to say it directly transcends the living world as opposed to the macrocosm, neutral zone, timeline, etc.
Where would this scale to?
General relativity describes space-time as a self-contained model of reality consisting of 3 spatial dimensions and 1 temporal dimension. However, since we know the Dimension of Swirling Lights was intended to be a higher dimensional space beyond the living world, this would make the macrocosm consist of at least 4 dimensions of space and 1 dimension of time: making universe 7 likely 5-D. - @ProfectusInfinity
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