Can you explain to me how time is regarded as the 4th dimension? Does it mean that if we assume time as a dimension then an object traveling to different time period is possible?
In: 1302
I know there is am experiment that’s never been tried but in theory if you “could” travel into outer space and orbited around earth at the speed of light for relatively small amount of time (1-5 years) and returned to earth you “could very possibly” end up 30 years in the future, in theory anyways. You can loom this up easily through a Google search!
As you walk down the street from your house to the store, the place and time you’re at are both changing. You’re traversing the four dimensions of space-time.
And the relative rate, at which time passes for you, is affected by your positional velocity, and by the gravitational field you’re in.
But no—just because time is a dimension you move through, even at variable speed, doesn’t imply that you have freedom of movement through it.
Think of moving through time like free-falling, at a steady rate, where wind resistance balances the acceleration of gravity. Changing your wind resistance can change how fast you fall, but it can’t reverse the fall—never mind teleport you to some non-contiguous time.
Well, think of it like this, if I told you to meet me on the 2nd floor of 31st and Broadway, you would have 3 coordinates of where to meet me. Longitude, latitude, and elevation… But that’s meaningless without the 4th, what time? So 9am on Tuesday at 31st and Broadway on floor 2 is 4 dementions. Now time travel is a little above ELI5, because it involves much more complicated stuff, but assuming you could travel faster than the speed of causality/time (you can’t) time would effectively stop, or possibly go backwards, but that’s not possible, and you’d definitely not survive getting anywhere close to that speed (as my understanding)
Dimensions give us where something is. If you want to meet someone, you need to be at the same place (same position in three dimensions) but also at the same time (fourth dimension).
All objects are traveling to different time periods. How do you think we have vases that were made during previous time periods?
I like to think of time as sort of a big worm. Or rather, each person’s/object’s path through time is a big worm. So if you could look at all of time from beginning to end, it would look like a crazy crisscrossing worm network. And each moment for us is just a cross section of that worm. So if you could scan forward or backward along it, you would theoretically be going to a specific place on that timeline/time-worm. It sounds better in my head. But instead of reality being a 2D cross section and time being 3D worm, reality is a 3D cross section and time is a 4D worm. Maybe one day someone will invent a machine that overlaps the worms and you could time travel. Who knows.
The number of dimensions we exist in can be thought of as the information that needs to be specified to locate an object or a person.
Imagine I’m telling you were to find me. My address locates me in 3 dimensional space, but I wouldn’t ask you to show up at any random time. I need to tell you to meet me at an address at a specific time. We are all located in both space and time.
Time is a “dimension” in the sense that it is a piece of information that is needed to locate something precisely. Here is an example:
Person A: “I was standing on the corner of 1st and Main street”
Person B: “Impossible! I was standing on the corner of 1st and Main street and I didn’t see you.”
Person A: “I was there on Sunday at 7pm”
Person B: “Aha! That explains it. I was there at 8pm.”
You cannot be accurate in this situation without giving location and time. Time is a dimension that is needed–just not a dimension in space. It is a time dimension. The combination of the two types of dimensions is called “the space-time continuum.” Using both space and time is an important way of being precise, especially when dealing with “relativity” in physics, where location and time get very complicated.
Theorically there could be up to 11 dimensions.
Here, enjoy having your mind blown in this simple video.
Time to share [my favorite video](https://youtu.be/0ca4miMMaCE)
If 1 dimension is a point, 2 dimensions can have that point slide up-down / left-right. Then the 3rd dimension would be back and forth… So where else can you move? Those 3 axis describe all physical space as you need to know – in any given instant.
What about another instant? How do you describe the motion from one instant to the next? Time. Time is the line you can draw from any 3D location to the next. If you could see time as we normally see space you would be a long line with a Baby at one end and a elderly person at the other (basically)
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