What is the fourth dimension? (My belief)

[Invader]

Unlike many people, I do not believe that the fourth dimesnion is time. I believe it is another spatial dimension. Mathematically, you have infinitely many dimensions. (x is 1 dimension, x^2 is two dimensions, x^3 is three dimensions, x^4 is four dimensions, etc.) But mathematics does not always translate directly into reality. But I believe that in this case, it does.

Time is just a convention we use to describe events. "Time" gives us order and proximity. We use time to say that this happened "first" and that this other event happened "almost immediately after" this event. However, unlike length, area, and volume, time does not measure a dimension. It can be compared to a set of encyclopedias. Volume 1 comes before Volume 2, and page 65 comes before page 78. King Louis V and King Louis VI are on the same page, while aardvarks and zoos are at opposite ends. However, this "encyclopedia" is not ordered alphabetically, but in the order the events "happened". Nor is it finished. More and more volumes are constantly added. But the first volumes have already been written and cannot be rewritten.

If the fourth dimension was time, then it would allow time travel. Just like you can go forward and backward in the three spatial dimensions, you could travel forwards and backwards in the "time" dimension as well. While this may sound fascinating, it allows for some unavoidable paradoxes.

One example is what is often called the "Grandfather Paradox". It states basically that if you go back in time and kill your grandfather before he married your grandmother, then your parents wouldn't be born, and neither would you. But if you were never born, then you couldn't have traveled back in time to kill your grandfather!

There are countless other paradoxes and impossible situations that would arise if time travel was possible, and that is yet another reason to believe the fourth dimension is not time.

Comments, Objections?

[void]

time?

i'm with FZ on this one..


And his little shiny pig-hoofs on the
Desk, Greggery ponders the
Question of eternity (and fractional
Divisions thereof), as mysterious
Angelic voices sing to him from a
Great distance, providing the
Necessary clues for the construction of
This thrilling new trend!

Sunday

Sunday?
Wow!
Sunday,
'monday

Sunday,

Saturday. . .tuesday through
- monday'!

Saturday. . .

And thus the calendar,
In all of its colorful disguises
Was presented to
The bored & miserable people
Everywhere!

Greggery issued a memo on it.
Whereupon the entire contents
Of the steno pool
Identified with it strenuously,
And worshipped it as a way of life,
And took their little pills by it.
And went back 'n forth from
Work by it.
And paid their rent by it,
And before long they were even
Having
Birthday parties in the office
By it.

[Invader]

I have thoroughly thought my arguements through with the 4th dimension being time. I have been thinking about this for weeks at a time. And this is what I think about it.


The idea most of us think of is the ability to travel forward or backward in time, to be able to specify the number of years you travel, or even to specify the date you want to go to, and to be able to return to your "correct" time safely.

Of course, there are other, more restricted definitions, but this is the broadest one possible. There are several proposed scenarios for time travel, and we will look at each in turn. For our discussions, we will focus mainly on traveling back in time, and then forward to the "present".

The possibility involves what I will call "branching time lines". This is the basic premise for many movies. It envisions time as a line. Now if you travel to the past, you can (and probably will) make some changes. Just by being there, whether you interact with someone or not, you will change things. You will cast a shadow. You will breathe the air. Your weight will make some sort of impact on the ground. Your body may block wind, rain, or snow from falling where it would have otherwise. You will leave footprints where you walk and fingerprints on everything you touch. And if you do interact with someone or something, it could have an even bigger impact. And whatever kind of impact you have on the world around you, it will forever change the course of the future.

The "future" as you know it would no longer exist. It may be a miniscule change or a radical change, but it would not be the same.

[RedOctober]

Hilarious..

Time is related to space in all kinds of formula's and therefore a dimension.

[Onsube]

One example is what is often called the "Grandfather Paradox". It states basically that if you go back in time and kill your grandfather before he married your grandmother, then your parents wouldn't be born, and neither would you. But if you were never born, then you couldn't have traveled back in time to kill your grandfather!
Comments, Objections?


What if you were your own grandfather?

futurama

[OylE]

A lot of what you say makes sense.
It has been said that "Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening all at once".
As far as time travel, we all are time travelers, we just all travel through time at the same rate, and only in the forward direction. Time machines DO exist in this Universe, only they are called "telescopes". Light entering telescopes from the other side of the Universe left there millions and billions of years ago; how we see the universe now is how it existed millions and billions and trillions of years ago; we do not even know what it looks like today. Conversely, the closest galaxy to our own is the Andromeda Galaxy, known as M31 (Messier 31). It is the brightest galaxy visible to the naked :D eye, and it is 2.2 million light-years away. 2,200,000 miles, and we can see it from a dark sky without a telescope.
There are some scientists that believe there are 14 dimensions, and yes, time is still one of them.
:rolleyes:

[OylE]

There is also the theory of "bubble universes". Everything we have ever seen exists only in our local bubble. Adjacent to the bubble that contains the Milky Way, all 11,000 objects of the NGC (New General Catalog), all 8,000 objects of the Uppsala catalog, the 110 Messier objects, etc, all exist in our own "bubble universe". Adjacent to our bubble universe are an infinite number of adjacent bubble universes we can never access, not even with a wormhole.
Pretty cool stuff, when you think about it.:hairout:

[Captain 151]

how about this:

take a 2 dimensional object. That object can only operate in its 2 dimensional world. introduce a 3-D object into that world, it will merely appear as a pulsating disc, to comment most simply on it. now suppose that 3-D object were all encompassing to that 2 dimensional object, would that not then function as "time"?

if we are agreeing that a 4th dimension exists, then to us we would have to see some visual representation (like the 2 dimensional pulsating disc example), otherwise the 4th dimesion would have to be all encompassing... so that we cant see it, but still know the effects. Time applies I think.

*brain explodes*

please note: this poster was once a physics major, but quickly failed all his courses. He actually knows nothing of the subject, and is merely firing blanks.

[pyrodude]

In response to the time travel statement we slow time down a lot in our daily activitys. As you get close to the speed of light time appears to slow down. This has been shown a number of time and even in relatively slow speeds (speed of sound for example) time changes. When the Concord airplane used to fly people experienced a slowing of time by about 1 second from London to New York.

[tw33k]

Umm, Einstein told of time being the Fourth dimension in his Special and General Relativity theories. 3 dimensions of space and 1 of time. Quantum physicists now hypothesize that there are up to 11 dimensions. Here's something stranger; in quantum physics, there is no time on the smallest scale. Before and after have no relevance, particles seemingly pop in and out of existence.

Heisenberg, one of the fathers of quantum theory, stated in his Uncertainty Principle that you cannot know the position of a quantum particle and it's direction (or momentum) at the same time. By simply observing one property the other property changes. Einstein, by the way, hated that theory and never could come to grips with quantum mechanics.

So General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics are two disparate theories that can be used to describe the movements of planets and the movements of subatomic particles, respectively. But they can't interact, so there has to be somethings scientists are missing. Einstein worked on the Unified Field Theory until his death but never could come up with a correlation. Now the top physicists are working on String Theory, where everything thing in the universe is made up of infinitesimally small "strings" that vibrate at different wavelengths to create all the types of matter and energy. But they will never be able to prove it, because of the Uncertainty Principle.

[CVN70]

Ahh! You've blinded me with science!

Seriously, my brain hurts. So much of what invader says I can agree with, but then other people put up such a good fight. But..

I believe time is a concept kept by man, not a fourth dimension. I mean, back in the old old days when England was the most powerful country in the world, the Prime Meridian was put right through it. Someone obviously said, "OK, let's set it on the Prime Meridian and make Greenwich the mean time." Time is kept by man on how long it takes the Earth to rotate once on it's axis. If time were a fourth dimension then wouldn't Daylight Savings Time screw everything up?

the Earth is roughly 24,000 miles around. so 24 hours in one day, every hour, the Earth rotates 15 degrees on it's axis. 15 x 24 = 360. a full day on earth. someone obviously came up with this. besides, if it were a fourth dimension, do we really have any proof that it is, there really isnt any cold hard evidence.
the earth is simply rotating on its axis and around the sun.
but i do agree with olye, light takes time to travel, so what we are really seeing is the universe billions of years ago. who knows if the earth will be around to see what the universe looks like presently. maybe the conspiracy of the maya's prediction could be right. since really we don't see the present, slipstream ruptures and whatnot could be rushing at us right now, and the ETA could be 2012. who knows.

my brain hurts.

[Jugular]

What if you were your own grandfather?

futurama

Forgot, can't flame outside of B&T

...damn

[JLXC]

I believe the 4th dimension could be time as well. Though time travel is possible I think because of the infinite reality theories. The "branching timelines" as discussed above is how I envision it. Infinite realities spawned constantly by choices and their actions on the world. If you changed time and then moved forward along that branch you'd see the changes, though if you went back to the exact branch you came from you'd see no difference at all. Interesting stuff and very intellectual for WTF! Huzzah!

:thumbsup:

[dirtlover]

hmm.. Newton's first law states that anything moving with sime speed in some direction will go on doing so if it does not interact with anything else. so our planet here is moving at speed something in direction x (dimension 1), different speed in direction y (dimension 2) and another speed in direction z (third dimension) at the same moment. so it goes through time at a certain speed, as far as i can see, so time could be a dimension. Doesn't matter though, wether it is or isn't won't change your life as far as i van see.

and as for the grandfather theory, if u went back (and killed your grandfather) you would start a different time branch, like a river, where your granfather did get killed. but it could be as rivers end oceans, it wouldn't matter in the end, we'll all die in the sun exploding or the univerese shrinking back etc, and time would be one whole again :D

PS. our planet does interact with many celestial objects, those object might also have affect on our time speed. not that it would change anything, cos for us it would still feel the same, because time as we feel it is compared to what is happening on earth, but if we compare to other objects we might see a difference in time, though as we cannot find out what really happens to them, only with help of light and other waves, so we might think the difference in speed is caused in one of the three dimensions. this might just as well make time travel possible, right?

PPS. sorry, i am just lazy to make this post more readable.

[pantlessninja]

I aint no quantum physican but i dont think time would be the 4dimension and that is because im just distrusting evry existing being on this hellole of a planet...
i do think that your dimensions are false we have based you dimensions on what we can see depth lengt width.....so why start creating dimension that we cant understand (the human is simple show something to her and shell belive in it but say soimething that she cant see and se will not belive it..)


damn that took alot of brain power to come up with....

[drnknbndr]

This is how I think of the 4th dimension, time, and space. It's all utter bullshit. I think. Who knows? Did we REALLY reach other planets with unmanned satellites? Did we REALLY travel hundreds of thousands of miles into space, and can't even find a cure for the common cold? Who knows? Why do people that keep dying always have the information? Were Einstein's dying words "Time is the 4th dimension"? Nobody knows. Well, i'd like to lay it down for you all. Space probably doesn't exist anymore. Our galaxy could be the only one for all we know. Maybe time is at a stand still when it hits the Earth's atmosphere. Does the Earth REALLY rotate at an exact time as it has for billions of years? No. A day on Earth 500 millino years ago was 24h 26m 20s, now it is 23h 56m 49s. Interesting eh? Maybe the Earth is picking up a few pounds from all that cosmic dust. Do you really think that all the space dust burning in the atmosphere just all of a sudden disappear? No! It stays in the atmonphere, and the earth is getting heavier by the second. The 4th dimension, eh? I think it doesn't exist. What IS the 1st dimension? Does anyone know without going to Google.com? I don't think so, unless you're a Quantam Physics teacher, which we have aplenty of. Besides, what ARE you doing on WTF.com? Anyways, The second and third dimension are the main ones. Time does not exist. It's just a bunch of numbers on a clock. Why do our bodies deteriorate? Because of all the funk in the air. How many days are there in a year? Alot, but I knor for sure it's not 365/366. How long do we REALLY sleep for? 8 hours or 32? Maybe we skip a day automatically. Who knows. Well, when we die and go to Heaven, or Hell for you naughty boys and girls, we'll know. :]

[DocBeezy]

quantum physican

??quantum physican = I think digital doctor??:confused:

[Shaman Yoh]

This is how I think of the 4th dimension, time, and space. It's all utter bullshit. I think. Who knows? Did we REALLY reach other planets with unmanned satellites? Did we REALLY travel hundreds of thousands of miles into space, and can't even find a cure for the common cold? Who knows? Why do people that keep dying always have the information? Were Einstein's dying words "Time is the 4th dimension"? Nobody knows. Well, i'd like to lay it down for you all. Space probably doesn't exist anymore. Our galaxy could be the only one for all we know. Maybe time is at a stand still when it hits the Earth's atmosphere. Does the Earth REALLY rotate at an exact time as it has for billions of years? No. A day on Earth 500 millino years ago was 24h 26m 20s, now it is 23h 56m 49s. Interesting eh? Maybe the Earth is picking up a few pounds from all that cosmic dust. Do you really think that all the space dust burning in the atmosphere just all of a sudden disappear? No! It stays in the atmonphere, and the earth is getting heavier by the second. The 4th dimension, eh? I think it doesn't exist. What IS the 1st dimension? Does anyone know without going to Google.com? I don't think so, unless you're a Quantam Physics teacher, which we have aplenty of. Besides, what ARE you doing on WTF.com? Anyways, The second and third dimension are the main ones. Time does not exist. It's just a bunch of numbers on a clock. Why do our bodies deteriorate? Because of all the funk in the air. How many days are there in a year? Alot, but I knor for sure it's not 365/366. How long do we REALLY sleep for? 8 hours or 32? Maybe we skip a day automatically. Who knows. Well, when we die and go to Heaven, or Hell for you naughty boys and girls, we'll know. :]

Yeah, tell it like it is! Frozen Milky Ways dominate!

[drnknbndr]

Ofcourse they do, my cosmic funk. There is no 4th dimension, so get over it. It's like saying: "Hey! I found a bajillion planets in our solar system! But they're all in the 4th dimension, so you can't see them. Only I can, because I have 't3h l337 haxx0rz'." Get it, no?

[megalania]

Time is just a convention we use to describe events. "Time" gives us order and proximity.

If the fourth dimension was time, then it would allow time travel. Just like you can go forward and backward in the three spatial dimensions, you could travel forwards and backwards in the "time" dimension as well. While this may sound fascinating, it allows for some unavoidable paradoxes.
Comments, Objections?
Do you understand the concept of a dimension. We can trivialize it and reduce it to x, x^2, x^3 and so on bu t a dimension is just a limitation on the way stuff happens. Time is a dimension because it is measurable and it, like volume, shows a limit.
However, whether or not it is the fourth dimension has always been a problem for me. Following the contruction menthod (you make a 3D image on a blackboard so you can make a 4D image in space (they have a toy that looks like it) it almost looks like you are right. But not quite.
And just because it is a dimension does not mean 'we' could travel back in time. We travel forward through time, one instant after another. Scientist have found a way to send objects forward in time (the science behind it is weird, just remember it involves assloads of energy); however, no one knows how to travel back in time. But ask yourself, could a 2 dimensional image control anything in the third dimension? The answer is of course no. A drawing of a person is contrained by the third dimension in ways similar to times own constraint on us.

[megalania]

This is how I think of the 4th dimension, time, and space. It's all utter bullshit. I think. Who knows? Did we REALLY reach other planets with unmanned satellites? Did we REALLY travel hundreds of thousands of miles into space, and can't even find a cure for the common cold? Who knows? Why do people that keep dying always have the information? Were Einstein's dying words "Time is the 4th dimension"? Nobody knows. Well, i'd like to lay it down for you all. Space probably doesn't exist anymore. Our galaxy could be the only one for all we know. Maybe time is at a stand still when it hits the Earth's atmosphere. Does the Earth REALLY rotate at an exact time as it has for billions of years? No. A day on Earth 500 millino years ago was 24h 26m 20s, now it is 23h 56m 49s. Interesting eh? Maybe the Earth is picking up a few pounds from all that cosmic dust. Do you really think that all the space dust burning in the atmosphere just all of a sudden disappear? No! It stays in the atmonphere, and the earth is getting heavier by the second. The 4th dimension, eh? I think it doesn't exist. What IS the 1st dimension? Does anyone know without going to Google.com? I don't think so, unless you're a Quantam Physics teacher, which we have aplenty of. Besides, what ARE you doing on WTF.com? Anyways, The second and third dimension are the main ones. Time does not exist. It's just a bunch of numbers on a clock. Why do our bodies deteriorate? Because of all the funk in the air. How many days are there in a year? Alot, but I knor for sure it's not 365/366. How long do we REALLY sleep for? 8 hours or 32? Maybe we skip a day automatically. Who knows. Well, when we die and go to Heaven, or Hell for you naughty boys and girls, we'll know. :]

The reason we cannot find a cure for the common cold is its amorphous nature. The bastard changes strains constantly and differently people carry different strains. There is no 'common' cold in the sense that it is all one thing, it is common in that they occur fairly often.

[megalania]

What IS the 1st dimension? Does anyone know without going to Google.com? I don't think so, unless you're a Quantam Physics teacher, which we have aplenty of. Besides, what ARE you doing on WTF.com? Anyways, The second and third dimension are the main ones. . :]
The first dimension is a line and I know this because I am not retarded. I am a not a Quantum Physics teacher. Think about 3 dimensions a cube 2 a square 1...oh my god its a line. and the 0th is a dot.

[anotheruser]

Just by being there, whether you interact with someone or not, you will change things. You will cast a shadow. You will breathe the air. Your weight will make some sort of impact on the ground. Your body may block wind, rain, or snow from falling where it would have otherwise. You will leave footprints where you walk and fingerprints on everything you touch. And if you do interact with someone or something, it could have an even bigger impact. And whatever kind of impact you have on the world around you, it will forever change the course of the future.


One example is what is often called the "Grandfather Paradox". It states basically that if you go back in time and kill your grandfather before he married your grandmother, then your parents wouldn't be born, and neither would you. But if you were never born, then you couldn't have traveled back in time to kill your grandfather!


The "future" as you know it would no longer exist. It may be a miniscule change or a radical change, but it would not be the same.

Have you ever heard of the "Cosmic Censure" theory? It states that if you try and modify time in the past, you will be prevented from doing so. You would not be able to shoot your grandfather due to some reason.




Time is just a convention we use to describe events. "Time" gives us order and proximity. We use time to say that this happened "first" and that this other event happened "almost immediately after" this event. However, unlike length, area, and volume, time does not measure a dimension. It can be compared to a set of encyclopedias. Volume 1 comes before Volume 2, and page 65 comes before page 78. King Louis V and King Louis VI are on the same page, while aardvarks and zoos are at opposite ends. However, this "encyclopedia" is not ordered alphabetically, but in the order the events "happened". Nor is it finished. More and more volumes are constantly added. But the first volumes have already been written and cannot be rewritten.



Define dimension. As for your "Encyclopedia theory", when applied to time travel, no one except you (maybe not even you) would be able to remember when the first encyclopedia was written. Time as they "remembered" would be the final volume edited by you and not the first one. The knowledge about that "encyclopedia" being "re written" would cease to exist as no one could "see" anything that happened before the time as it used to originally exist as they would not even know that such a time existed and they would think the "new" time was the original time. When thoughts are "re written", anything can be possible. If I made the time period of the earth's rotation zero somehow in the past like ten years before, then the "future scientists" will simply try and come up with a new theory to explain it and it would all happen without them knowing that someone had "modified" the natural phenomenon ten years in the past.


If the fourth dimension was time, then it would allow time travel. Just like you can go forward and backward in the three spatial dimensions, you could travel forwards and backwards in the "time" dimension as well. While this may sound fascinating, it allows for some unavoidable paradoxes.

Forgive me if I am wrong, but aren't all these so called "paradoxes" true only if one has the idea of absolute time? Also about your "forward and backward" time travel, refer to hypercubes if you have not read about them. It seems to satisfy the current theories regarding time as the fourth dimension.

[upuaut]

I don't think that we can make the assumption that because a dimension exists that we must be able to utilize it in some manner. One doesn't choose to exist within the first three dimensions. One is subjected to the effects of 3 dimensions by existing. Time likewise, is just the effect of being within a moving system. Maybe we'll be able to travel in time some day, but the fact that we can't today doesn't prove anything.

[Chad]

Stop Necro Posting

[hoseq]

My only thought on this is

Matter
Energy
Space
Time

Matter being pushed around in Space by Energy = Time

The planet spins
The planet revolves around the sun

therefore time is nothing more than an observation of all that matter being pushed around in space by energy

Therfore time itself doesnt exist unless we give it its existence

Therefore everything that has happened and is happening and will happen is only part of how we percieve time

So i surmise time itself doesnt exist, we exist, our perception of what is happenning but it is only percieved to be happening in a linear "time" as it were because we dont want everything to happen so fast that the game is over instantly.:confused:

[megalania]

01000001 00100000 01100110 01110010 01101111 01111010 01100101 01101110 00100000 01001101 01101001 01101100 01101011 01111001 00100000 01010111 01100001 01111001 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01100010 01100101 01110100 01110100 01100101 01110010 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100001 01101110 00100000 01110011 01100101 01111000 00101110

Sex is better than a frozen milky way.

Hoseq, what the hell are you talking about? Time =Distance/rate or Reactants/rate of reaction. It is a measure to see how far something has progressed not the state of matter being pushed through space with energy.

[hoseq]

I don't think that we can make the assumption that because a dimension exists that we must be able to utilize it in some manner. One doesn't choose to exist within the first three dimensions. One is subjected to the effects of 3 dimensions by existing. Time likewise, is just the effect of being within a moving system. Maybe we'll be able to travel in time some day, but the fact that we can't today doesn't prove anything.

Dude we all travel thru time just not backwards or even sideways. But maybe we could.

[vezza]

[QUOTE]01000001 00100000 01100110 01110010 01101111 01111010 01100101 01101110 00100000 01001101 01101001 01101100 01101011 01111001 00100000 01010111 01100001 01111001 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01100010 01100101 01110100 01110100 01100101 01110010 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100001 01101110 00100000 01110011 01100101 01111000 00101110

01001001 01110011 00100000 01110100 01101000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01110010 01100101 01100001 01101100 01101100 01111001 00100000 01110100 01110010 01110101 01100101 00111111

[hoseq]

Sex is better than a frozen milky way.

Hoseq, what the hell are you talking about? Time =Distance/rate or Reactants/rate of reaction. It is a measure to see how far something has progressed not the state of matter being pushed through space with energy.


Simple.
If you have a piece of matter and you push it thru a space, useing energy, you get the perception that time is elapsing.
Simple.

[hoseq]

The first dimension is a line and I know this because I am not retarded. I am a not a Quantum Physics teacher. Think about 3 dimensions a cube 2 a square 1...oh my god its a line. and the 0th is a dot.


The 0th dimension that you threw out is actually nonexistent. There cannot be an 0th dimension that logically aligns within your statement, the dot dimension that you wrote of is still 1 dimensional.