You know, if our 3D world was merely a plane in a larger 4D world, if a 4D 'pole' was stuck through our 3D world then it could look like a sphere floating in mid air.
If you pushed the sphere then you might be able to 'move it'. Moving it could likely mean that you 'actually' moved your 3D world and the sphere stayed where it was (as the part of the 4D pole in the 4D world).
I think it would be really cool if someone from a larger 4D world would do that.
A sphere appears suspended in mid air in the middle of my room.
I push the sphere and it appears to move.
I release the sphere and it moves back to where it used to be, suspended in the same location (because of some sort of 4D gravity impacting the 3D plane (assuming the 3D plane was free to move through 3 dimensions of the 4D world)).
Man, that would be so cool.
John.
[Update: I take it back. If the pole appeared as a sphere in my room, because of the motion happening in this 3D world (i.e. the Earth is spinning) then we'd have one nasty, very high-speed collision on our hands, and I'd be in all sorts of strife sitting next to 'ground zero'. So, this would not be cool at all, it would in fact be catastrophic. What would be cool is if I had a space ship that was stationary in the 3D plane with respect to insertion of the 4D pole prior to 'pole insertion'.. ;)] (although I wouldn't be able to move my space ship any significant distance until the 4D pole was removed!)
Wow. That's cool.
The idea of the use of colour to enable social status recognition is a classic. :)