English: This image shows a 6D representation of the Calabi-Yau quintic manifold, an Einstein manifold that could embody the 6 hidden dimensions of 10-dimensional string theory. The image in File:CalabiYau5.jpg is a 2D cross-section of this manifold constructed by setting a sum of 5th powers of two complex variables equal to unity. In the full 6D form, this unit size should actually be a complex-valued sum of 5th powers of two additional complex numbers (a complex function of four real parameters).

Replacing unity by the appropriate complex sum sampled on a 4D lattice of these numbers at values (-2,-1,0,+1,+2) alters the equation for the 2D cross-section. While each individual 2D plot at these lattice points resembles File:CalabiYau5.jpg, they are distinct. For example, when the total value sums to zero, the size of the 2D plot vanishes, and the locus of these vanishing points is itself a 2D surface of zeroes embedded in 4D with the same shape as File:CalabiYau5.jpg. Note that in order to represent the 4D space of sampled points in a human-readable form, we have first chosen a 3D cubic lattice of the first three variables, and then attached a diagonal line of samples in the fourth variable to each 3D lattice point.

We mention for the interested viewer that all of these representations are local, meaning that some remaining parts of the shape at infinity are omitted for visual clarity. This additional structure at infinity can be incorporated in a complicated way to give a representation that is a compact manifold inside a bounded region. This is an essential part of the role of Calabi-Yau spaces in string theory: they are supposed to be very tiny compact Euclidean Einstein spaces, so small that their six dimensions are invisible to us in our ordinary four-dimensional spacetime experience.