The term “spacetime” and the concept of time being the “fourth dimension” appear to contradict each other. Is time actually a 4th dimension, or are all dimensions captured in time?
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There is ‘almost’ two different types of time when you look at Newtonian physics and relativity which is probably what caused your question. There is the ‘Captured’ time, which is how we use physics as a tool, you need to know how things happened in the past and how things will happen in the future so we mapped events to a time line.
With relativity we found out that the rate of time passing can change, this is more of the 4th dimension, the rate changes in different places so space and time are intertwined.
If we try and use variable rate time and put it into our normal model of a time line, everything falls apart. Different observers observe different rates of time so there is no universal time to capture everything. So in relativity time needs to be tethered to an observer to make sense of anything, it’s kinda where the name comes from, and just like position being tethered to an observer time is also for a 4th dimension.
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