By Ben Brumfield | March 30, 2017

Hold tight for a psychedelic trip to hyperbolic space, where the floor drops out from beneath your feet.

Math just met “warp drive” in a virtual reality headset to transport anyone who dons the visor to a reality twisted by hyperbolic geometry. The program was co-created by Sabetta Matsumoto, a physicist and applied mathematician at the Georgia Institute of Technology as a visual aid to researchers exploring geometries that deviate from the everyday norm.

Splashed in color, the virtual space’s graphics can seduce even the most math-phobic mind to roam, crawl or slither about. When Matsumoto or her collaborator, mathematician Henry Segerman from Oklahoma State University, do that, they’re actually exploring particular geometric nooks.

“If you walk around in this space, things that started out horizontal and vertical become twisted and weird,” Segerman said, as he donned a VR headset. He slid around a diamond-like shape in VR hyperbolic space, describing it. “It never stops, just keeps going, and you never get to the back side of it.”