Time?

[TechKnight]

The problem with every theory involving time is that most fail to realize this: time is NOT a dimension, and therefore it is impossible to travel through time because we humans can only imagine things in and travel through dimensions. Prove that time is a dimension and time travel is possible. But you can't prove that time is a dimension. If you disagree, feel free to respond and explain why.

[dgeake]

It probably depends on how you define a dimension.

Time can certainly enter into equations just like spatial dimensions. To me time seems to be unique in only one aspect, it is incredibly difficult to travel through time except in the "preferred" direction if you have mass. And if you are massless, the best you can do is to stay in one place (in time). (In fact that might be all you can do.)

At this juncture I don't think it's fair to involve tacyons because they are purely hypothetical and their use in theories usually results in inconsistencies. I'm only aware of one purported detection and it has not been reproduced. Of course if they did exist, that would mean travel in time could be bidirectional, which, I think, would support the idea of time as a dimension.

Define dimension, and let the fun begin.

So what is a dimension?

[wholloway]

How about a dimension being any attribute of a physical or non-physical object that can be measured. I think this covers everything?

[dgeake]

Seems like you may have included "non-physical" in your definition just to be sure it could include time. What other non-physical "objects" exist. Is "non-physical object" an oxymoron? I don't usually think of time as an object. Maybe it's just semantics, but I think of objects as things with limits and boundaries. Is time bounded, or is it limitless? I really don't know the answer.

[syndicated]

i think time can be both, limited and limit-less. I believe it all depends on the situation and circumstances in which you are speaking.

Speaking quantitativly, time has boundaries. If i were to ask you for the time, or ask you how old something or someone is, then time has a boundary. A man is 56 years, 35 days etc. old. Or the time is 5:30am. You can define time in those instances. But if i were to ask you how long the universe will be around or when time will end, you can't answer, since no one knows. But not only that, what if you were to fall into a black hole, where time theoretically will stretch into infinity, then you can't define it by any known standard right?

Saying that time isn't a dimension simply because it can't be quantified all the time like the 3 spatial dimensions is a bit close minded I think.
Didn't someone important once say that belief is the death of learning?

[thurst0n]

There is time Travel though...I'll take a simple example When people go into space and they are traveling at fast speeds, they come back minutes younger than they should. If you do not get this ask I can explain it better, or someone else can surely explain it better than I. So then if you were to Travel at incredible speeds (that which near the speed of light) you would EXPERIENCE time all the same, but the way that the people not moving at these speeds EXPERIENCE time would be percieved by you to be incredibly fast. It's all about perception...if we lived on a diff planet that traveled through space at differant speeds it would all be differant...watch star trek...i think i'm done rambling...

[deamonstar]

hey thurstOn... how is it that you came up with your user name? it happens to be my real last name and it also caught my attention that you are also using the same avatar as me... weird coincident?
I also like your signature. I've seen it on many bumper stickers, pins and patches... it reminds me of a few lines from the book "pilgrims passage"....
"...and then I saw that there was a way to hell, even from the gates of heaven."

[Dent]

The only reason i fear my death is for my loved ones , our time here is a precious gift a gift which allows us to explore the beauty in life and the wonderfull biodiversity .... our time is short in our own personal reference frames but when we die we all go to the same place which is bizarly the same place weve always been..... were never alone never can be and carrying a maintenence of slowness that allows us to perceive beauty... concept of time - there is no time just moments.

[Roberto]

In physics, when we say that time is a dimension, it is not an arbitrary attribution. When Relativity Theory appeared, it took some time to someone propose that time could be viewed as a dimension. The first who realized it and coined the expression spacetime was Minkowski. In Relativity, time and space are entangled in a very special way: both together define the metric of the spacetime. It may seem just words without meaning, but the metric of the space is what gives the gravitational force in General Relativity. So, the issue of being or not a dimension is something very deep and not just a matter of convention. Of course there is the mathematical meaning of dimension, but it is another story...

[Noah]

If anybody reads Astronomy magizine, check out Bob Berman's article on page 18 of the December 2003 issue...Very interesting read, gives the viewpoints of quite a few theories...And only 1 page long!