Quote:
Originally Posted by Moontanman
I think the idea that time is a dimension is flawed, if we lived in a four spatial dimensional universe I think we would still see time, probably as a 5th dimension but we would still be wrong. ...
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You're right. Time is not THE 4th Dimension.
There are three (3) spatial dimensions. If you have "time" to plot them.
Seriously folks, that's really the way it is -- BUT scientists and engineers often have need to plot the positions of events. Trouble is, the events don't always happen at the same time. Suppose we're plotting radar bounce events. We have this map, see, and on it we plot where our radar detected reflections. But some reflections happened before others, and this is important.
So, we arbitrarily, draw in a new "dimension" and we call it "time". Now we can plot where and when the radar reflections occured.
But the physicist says, "that's not good enough. My calculations have to involve the speed of the radar beam and its reflection (c), and the speed of the vehicle carrying the radar, and the speed of the target. Your arbitrary "time" axis isn't good enough for me."
So the engineers knock heads and come up with this: Let's turn our arbitrary "time" axis into a pseudo-distance axis. If we take the clock-time in seconds and multiply that by c, then that would give us units of distance. [ sec * m/sec = m] Now, to avoid this pseudo-distance axis being just some combination of the three real distance axes, we can also multiply it by i [the square root of minus one]. Our time-pseudo-distance (TPD) is now an imaginary number. And we all know how to do complex arithmetic!
And it worked! The physicist could now do his calculations and get the right answers.
And the years and generations went by until... folks actually begin to think that time was the "fourth" dimension. And then they had doubts. "Wait! That can't be right! Time isn't like the other dimensions at all! I can't see time or go back in time like I can, say, East-West!"
And they were right.
