Ezekiel’s Wheel: An Incursion of the Multidimensional?

My prophets course this semester is now in full swing, and we are reading Ezekiel’s vision of the fantastic wheels this afternoon (Ezek 1:1-28). Last academic year, John D. Willard was taking a course with me and shared the above image. This is his commentary, which I find just fascinating:

In the early 1990s, as part of my job, I visited the Jet Propulsion Laboratory near Fulton, Maryland. There was a group doing a project that involved modeling what multi-dimensional objects (4th, 5th, 6th, 7th dimensions) would look like if they passed through our three dimensional world. This was at a time when computers were slow and the graphics capabilities of the average computer were slim or non-existent. They had huge computers with independent roof-top cooling units. This was impressive stuff!

One of the project managers showed me a graphic model of one of these 5th or 6th dimensional objects. It appeared to be a flower-looking object with sections rotating in one direction, with a lower segment moving in the opposite direction. In the model, it moved around the screen several times. I suddenly remembered the passage from Ezekiel 1:16 of the wheel within a wheel.