Planets in the Fourth Dimension
I've been playing the Kerbal Space Program (KSP) game lately; it's funny how when you actively use orbital mechanics, thinking about them is easier.<p>This fourth dimension observation is cool and likely very useful mathematically, but it's also kinda obvious (at least after playing KSP) that if you subtract the time/gravity element from an orbit, it becomes circular. It's equivalent to saying that if you subtract out the gravity effects of the planet you're orbiting, your orbital speed is constant, which just makes sense intuitively.<p>Calling this observation a fourth dimension is useful, but perhaps unnecessarily complicated for the simple concept.