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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Let’s say you and I are having a meeting. In order to meet you need to know two things: where to meet me and WHEN to meet me. If I tell you where but don’t tell you when you could miss me entirely. The same thing is true of describing any object in space. You can’t just give X, Y, and Z coordinates. You also have to give a T coordinate, aka time.
When scientists and mathematicians talk about dimensions they aren’t talking about other universes or realities, they are talking about the coordinates you use to locate something in the universe, we call that space time.
So yes time is its own dimension. From our perspective time is a bit different in that we can only move one way on it, and we can’t really change our speed, unlike the other three dimensions. But in physics it can still be treated the same as the other dimensions when it comes to certain equations and models.
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