I’m trying to wrap my head around this. I perceive time as though the present moment is a wave I’m riding through space and experience. Does Spacetime, as presently understood, suggest that time is more likely an ocean that exists and is “real” stretching off towards the horizons? In other words, is the present the only thing that is real as we traverse the dimension of time? Or do the distant past and future also exist, despite my inability to experience them, just as distant points in space do?
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When you want to find something, you must know its position with respect to all three spacial coordinates, but also time. Time is like a fourth direction things can move in, but one in which, for as of now uknown reasons, we are only able to move one way. Never the other, though it can be distorted and dilated by gravitational fields just like the other spacial dimensions.
Using the word “simultaneously” here is tricky because by its very definition it invokes time. When two things happen simultaneously, they are happening at the same time. Naturally if two things are separated by time, lets say past and future relative to us, they cannot be simultaneous.
It’s easier to understand if we extrapolate to a spacial dimension. Imagine some random direction axis and two objects placed on it, so that they are not in the same place. This axis represents time, and the two objects exist at different times. To say they exist simultaneously would be to say they occupy the same place on that axis, but we can clearly see they do not.
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