ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Hyperbolic 3-manifold

Okay kiddo, so imagine you are living in a world that has only one surface, like a piece of paper. But this piece of paper is very different than the one you normally use in your drawing book. This paper has a special shape that is called hyperbolic. This means that if you take two parallel lines, they will never meet or intersect, unlike the normal paper you use where parallel lines intersect at infinity.

Now, let's imagine that you live there, and you want to explore this special sheet of paper, but it has curves and bumps everywhere, and it is difficult to understand them. So, to make it more manageable, you put a grid or lattice on top of it, similar to when you play tic-tac-toe.

This lattice helps you understand where you are, and how to move around. But there is one problem; it is bent and twisted in weird ways, so sometimes shapes that are squares or triangles in normal 3D space, look distorted.

Now, let's think about this same idea, but with a 3D world; this is called a hyperbolic 3-manifold. The same thing happens as in the 2D world, but now there are more dimensions, and things get even more complicated.

Researchers and mathematicians study these special shapes and try to understand how they work, what their properties are, and what they can tell us about our 3D world.

In summary, a hyperbolic 3-manifold is a special type of shape that is curved and twisted in such a way that it can be visualized and understood by putting a grid or lattice on top of it. It is a useful tool for researchers trying to understand shapes, spaces, and how they relate to our reality.