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Original post by I Like Bread
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So, we've all heard argued that time can be considered the 4th dimension. Yet some scientists insist there is a 4th spatial dimension that cannot yet be seen. You know, the whole "take a argument. I say it's a mixture of both. Time can be treated as a spatial, that can be bent, traversed across in both directions, et cetera. I argue that if someone were to make visible dimensions smaller, time would somehow also seem smaller. For example, if you were sucked into a black hole, I contend that you would never reach the center. You would possibly be crushed to death
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Interesting story, I would like to see where you take this, however I have a few points to argue. That Time is the 4th dimesnsion is not mere speculation, it is accepted as a real one, that is, of course, if you accept Einsteins Theory Special Relativity and unless you are among the select few who don't (see autodynamics, who also accepts time as 4th dimension but argues agaisnt speed of light barrier, nuetrinos and black holes) then time is accepted as the 4th dimension.

Since you seem to accept black holes as real then I assume you accept Einstein's theories and that time is a 4th dimension. There is no 4th spatial dimension, that is only true in mathematical imaginings.

As for reachiong the center of a black hole you would in fact reach the center of the black hole quite quickly as the important part of the theory of relativity is often ignored, the relative part. Thus to you time passes normally, lengths are the same etc. To an observer however, it would seem as if you never reached the center of the black hole and if there was a window into the ship, time would seem to have stopped, frozen for you as all the dimensions are compressed.

Obscure mentioned that string theorists believe that there are about 11 dimensions, this is true, (see M-Theory, Branes, and compressed Dimensions), however the intensly contrevorsial string theory should not affect your story... I don't think. Relativity should suffice on its own.



[edited by - Daerax on December 11, 2003 5:25:28 PM]

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There is no 4th spatial dimension, that is only true in mathematical imaginings.

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string theorists believe that there are about 11 dimensions, this is true

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so there isn''t a fourth, but there are eleven total? Interesting perspective...

In string theory, dimensions 5 through 11 only span about 10^-33 cm
so they won''t be noticeable.

Einstein was right about everything, trust me.

I''ll have more on this tomorrow when I have more time to read your
posts.

TT

http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf103/sf103a04.htm

There''s your Einstein rebuttal!

Heh... not really. It seems that relativity should also be relative. I really do believe in most of his theories, like black holes, light speed barrier, and such-- but keep in mind that part of this story takes place in a world outside of the rules that construct our universe.

To be honest, I''m basing most of the story on concepts introduced in a short story called "Flatland". It was written over a century ago, and I''m sure you can Google it. The basic premise is that a world functions on simple rules: not rules that define the world, but rules defined by the world. For example, the number 4 did not exist until someone decided that it should be the sum of 2 and 2. The Theory of Relativity works because other made-up laws allow it to work. To a superdimensional being(one who lives outside dimensions), our "laws of physics" would look like a large game of connect-the-dots.

Now, allow yourselves to believe that time-travel is not only possible, but made quite simple by viewing the entire lifespan of the universe as a circle. At 90 degrees, we have a pinpoint thread representing the beginning/end of the universe as a microscopic ball of superdense material. It balloons out along the diameter, apparently its largest at the opposite end. Time travel now becomes the simple matter of pinpointing your angle from the center, and shooting out into the universe at a specific XYZ coordinate.

Unfortunately, I didn''t really want the topic to take this kind of direction. The time-travel technical side really kind of works itself out in the above example. I was searching for more philosophical viewpoints on the reprocussions of affecting the past, such as canceling out the need to travel in the first place, instigating events that might cause your death long before you traveled, whether or not you would have to wait for said events to happen, or even if you are affected by the changing of history at this point. Hell, you may just gain a sort of "abstract" status when you become a statistical impossibility, and become totally immune from any sort of "predestined" fate.

So, how about that?


B. Bradley: The number 2 mind

www.numbermind.com(coming soon)

There is a question that if you change your past, i.e. stop your parents from being killed, then will your own memory of your life up to now change, if it does then it causes that whole in the future I won''t need to go into the future.

But if the power the super alien race things give, puts the main character outside of time, any changes the main character makes will not personnaly effect him. In fact he could become like one of the alien beings except human aswell.

The only problem with this is the older self causing the war. Of course if the older self, somehow lost some/all of his powers this wouldn''t matter anymore.

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Original post by OrigamiMan64

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There is no 4th spatial dimension, that is only true in mathematical imaginings.

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string theorists believe that there are about 11 dimensions, this is true

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so there isn''t a fourth, but there are eleven total? Interesting perspective...

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Hmmm, I was taken out of context for you see, I said "Obscure mentioned that string theorists believe that there are about 11 dimensions, this is true", so I was acknowledging the existance of a theory that allowed more than 4 dimensions; and you would only accept that there are 11 dimensions if you accept M-Theory.

As for the interesting perspective look at it thusly, If you only believe in relativity and not string theory then there are not 11 dimensions, if you believe in string theory then there are 11 dimensions of which time is the 4th, STILL, not a spatial dimension. See?

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There''s your Einstein rebuttal!

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Indeed Einsteins theory fails in areas of high gravity, hence the existance of string theory.

Ahh.. General Relativity''s inability to explain the speed gain rate of DI Herculis Binary star system, it fails in other areas also (see autodynamics, an unfamous theory which remedies this by the removal of a root!) but we have been told to steer away from the technical...

Hmm... The consequences of time travel. How solid is your alternate worlds system? You seem to bring up that alternate universe are created but not clearly. Alternate universes are a fine way out of the logical inconsitensies.

I once made a massive post on time travel and what I said was this, If you accept IntraUniversal Time Travel then you accept that everything is happening at once, the future has already happened, and the past is happening right now. For example in order to go to the future and find it occuring then it means that the future is happening presently. If one limits time travel into the past, that is, you can only go back to what has happened, then, not only is the past happening at the same time as the present it proves that the future is also happening. If we were to oneday discover time travel then they might visit their past, our presesnt...

This however can be disproven if time is viewed not as something but as a dimension. But first, most people view time as circular, thus, one can ask, how can you exist if you go back and murder your parents? The answer is you cannot. If time is viewed as linear however and you are nothing more that a collection of molecues then you can in fact jump back and destroy your parents and still exist. Since everything is progressing linearly it is possible to destroy your molecules or the molecueles which caused your generation and still exist.

  ____________________________________ John Time travels  |                                   | and destroys parents \|/                                  ||--|---------------------------|--------------|   collection                  Time                of molecuels                Travel   named John created          discovered 

The consequences depend on whether time is then viewed as a dynamic or static dimension. Assuming a dynamic nature:

The question is if you will be remembered. The answer is yes, if you are nothing more than a series of connections between nuerons then the sudden removal of a series of molecules will not affect others, it will be a normal murder, save the fact that through out all coordinates of the time dimension your parents will suddenly disappear, creating a problem as I will explain.

However, if time is viewed as a static dimension then it goes to say that the universe was created at once. That is time is somewhat a descriptor dimension, it is nothing but the dimension where all the states of the other dimensions are realized, the exchange of bosons, the medium through which the string vibrations move that causes things to seem to happen...

For exmaple take a cartoon broken up into its seperate frames if in one of the frames a cartoon was deleted non of the other frames are affected as they have already been drawn, so going back and killing your parents will cause a death only for that time, they will suddenly be alive again later in time. You would have to continually kill them. However if you returned to the past to precisely when you killed them, not only will you find yourself there, your parents will be dead. Basically their death is equivalent to your time travel, save that the manner in which they left the current time is different, as really time travel is nothing but teleportation with regard for the time dimension. They will still remain in the future and past, as you do when you travel in time.

In a dynamic view, where changes propogate through the different coordinates, If you were to time travel, then all yourselves would vanish, however the total energy of the universe would become unbalanced and you would not be able to kill yourself, or visit your self in the future.

Another point agaisnt the dynamic view would be that like all the other dimensions time is expaninding, thus time traveling into the future is disallowed. This is quickly broken down by the fact that a visit from the future is possible.

So your changes in time are only for that time, there are problems with this theory which I will not discuss now, ahh the mathematics behind such a description of time are stupifying, it makes me cry. Adding extra universes alleviates some of these but add its own share of problems.

A brief View of problems of a dynamic multiverse:

Basically you can ignore the consequences by saying another universe was created and you were placed in it where you were never born and it balances as you on longer exist in your origin universe but exist here, so there you parents live and you are born and you go back and try to kill your parents but another universe is created where you are never born, or you find another universe with infinite yous...hmm...I think that is enough for now. I feel sick.

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As for the interesting perspective look at it thusly, If you only believe in relativity and not string theory then there are not 11 dimensions, if you believe in string theory then there are 11 dimensions of which time is the 4th, STILL, not a spatial dimension. See?

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saying that time is ''the fourth'' is as fallicious as saying that up and down is ''the second'' and forward and backward ''the third''. It would be more accurate to say that time is one of those 11 dimensions.

Did not read the whole thread, but:
The travle back in time and change something "problem",
It has already happened!
If you went back in time to change something, the change would already be there when you went back in time! (and before)
This way, you cant actualy change anything, since the current world are allready affected! I think this is a nicer "one-timeline" theory... like 12 monkies!

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Original post by OrigamiMan64

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As for the interesting perspective look at it thusly, If you only believe in relativity and not string theory then there are not 11 dimensions, if you believe in string theory then there are 11 dimensions of which time is the 4th, STILL, not a spatial dimension. See?

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saying that time is ''the fourth'' is as fallicious as saying that up and down is ''the second'' and forward and backward ''the third''. It would be more accurate to say that time is one of those 11 dimensions.

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Not really, the essential principle for the deminsion at least the first three is that they are based on the previous dimensions. So The first dimension is Length the second width and the third is hieght, and you can''t have width without length.

so
1D = a line
2D = a square
3D = a cube
4D = .... I guess it would be a cube at fixed point in time.

so if time is the 4th dimension. That means everyting can be located by fixing its 4 dimensions.

Also red dwarf had an amusing spin on time travel. In one episode they located a time machine. So there they are in deep space and they decieded to travel back in time 2 billion years when earth still existed. Only to find themselves in deep space only 2 billions years in the past. Now if they had time machine and a faster then life drive they could travel to any time and place.

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Writer, Programer, Cook, I''m a Jack of all Trades
Current Design project
Chaos Factor Design Document

First of all, let me appologise for straying from the topic and/or current line of descussion. Somewhat offtopic, but I thought of it while reading through the above posts.

The whole thing about the guy who killed the heros parents being the hero in the future..

In Soul Reaver 2, Kain resurects the dead human Raziel. When Raziel finds out that he had been an anti-vampire type priest, he is shoked. It later turns out that he, the vampire incarnation is the one who kills his human self, which is then resurected by Kain. Theres a good bit of time travel in it.
I thought it was interesting the way when he is killed by his future self, goes back in time after a lot of other things happen, kills his past self, and is killed by the Soul Reaver sword, so that his soul can become the soul in the sword, which Raziel takes off Kain in the future. But trying to stop everything from happening, Kain stops Raziel (the vampire one) from dieing causing everything to change.. but in fact nothing has changed, the soul is still thre which implies that he does die.
Ok, I have no idea what Im trying to say, sorry!
The story is in a vicious circle of sorts and I found it very intrigueing. This descussion reminded me of it and I just had to share it. lol.



Back on topic a bit, I thought of this a few days ago. If the universe is four dimensional, where the fourth dimension is time, but it is in fact a spatial dimension, then an object, lets say a cube for simplicity, could be drawn in 4D, full size in one space of the fourth dimension, and as a single point in another. This way as you travel through the 4th dimension, the cube naturally decays. If travelling through the 4th dimension happens naturally at a pre-determined pace, then it would be like time. The cube decays through time. I went somewhat more indepth but am too tired/lazy to dig up my notes.