4th dimension

[Itay]

instead of flooding other threads with my 4th dimension theories...
i open a new thread to discuss about it.

now satori, and infact anyone else who still didn't got my point about that 4th dimension isn't time...

please read
this

it's seems like an intresting subject to discuss about,
so lets hear your thoughts....

 

[Satori]

Yes it is in fact a very nice article and it is as believable as anything else. It could be there but then so could anything, if it is truly unobservable as the article suggests. I do have some issues with it, which I will outline.

The article says that light slows in the presense of gravity simply because the space is curved and the light in fact takes longer to reach it's destination. This works for light which is measured in time and relative distance traveled, but it says nothing of atomic clocks whose relative distance does not change. Why would something that *doesn't* travel be subject to the same "light bending and traveling further" analogy? Why would a clock that isn't moving relative to it's comparison clock take longer to get there? I can see space "appearing" to slow light because of it's relative distance traveled, but I feel this analogy simply can't be applied to clocks simply because the clock has not moved relative to the fixed clock so why would it be presumed to have it's vibration slowed? Of course, in a way I can see it, but I find it suspicious. It totally makes sense though.

My only other objection to the article was this, and I realize this doesn't invalidate the rest of it, I'm just nit-picking:

"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!"

I thought this was pretty lame. For one, it's asserting that if time were the 4 dimension then that would "would allow time travel". This is a rather brave assumption to say the least. We exist in the macro world of newtonian physics and you can't apply quantum physics to humans, it doesn't coorelate. The fact that you can't travel in time doesn't at all imply that time isn't the 4 dimension, I don't know where that idea came from but it makes not sense to me at all. The assumption that time would exactly obey the laws of our 3 spatial dimensions is absurd.

Great article though!

Satori

 

[Duvall]

The 4th dimension MUST be time. The 5th dimension is a band, and I highly doubt that time would get kicked down to dimensions 6+. Time is happy where it is.

 

[Mikael is God]

booooo!!!!!

 

[Orchid]

I don't know if time is the 4th dimension.. I remember having a drunken "discussion" with a mathematician about this. He said time was something like the 17th dimension, while I was blabbering about something I don't care to remember.

But anyway, the most obvious paradox of time travel, The Grandfather Paradox...

There are two ways to eliminate the paradox. First, the parallel worlds. In this world, the one you're currently living in, you go back in time to do something that will at the end of the day prevent your own birth, so logically in that world you will not be born, but by choosing to do such an action, you have created a new branch of reality. When you go back to the future (in the new reality) you'll find out you haven't been born, but in the previous ("original") reality you were born and used the time machine -> no paradox.

The other theory I read in a science magazine, but I can't remember it accurately.. some scientists used billiard balls to represent people, did a vast number of "collision tests" on a table and came to a conclusion that the Nature works so that in the long run the "collision" which causes the most minimal effect on the other balls is the most likely to happen. So if you tried to go back in time and push your grandma off the cliff, certain events would take place, rendering you unable to push her off the cliff and thus causing only minimal effects on the future (ie. time is a wide river, you are a pepple, and someone who throws the pepple into the river is the time machine. Does the flow of the river change when you're cast into the stream? Yes, but very little.)

I'll find the magazine and write the article here, unless someone else figured out what I was talking about and beats me to it.

All rights to editing this message reserved.

 

[Satori]

Damn, I was hoping Eric (or anyone) would babble about the atomic clock being slowed by the spatial forth dimension. Oh well.

I am of the opinion that time travel (backwards at all, or forward great distances) will probably always be impossible for humans. I do however feel that time travel can be and is a reality for certain particles or whatever who aren't limited by our macro newtonian universal laws. I feel that any intelligent discussion about time travel must make this distinction between the human and the quatum realm.

Satori

 

[Canned Leech]

Im not an expert in this field, but ill give it a shot.

First off, i think that time is indeed the fourth dimension. However, it does not exist as many people think it does. It is NOT continually "going on", the future is what it always has been and always will be. To me, all the events that have ever occured and will ever occur are permanently stuck in our universe. We, as humans, are "traveling through" this fourth dimension. We get the illusion that time is flowing, that we are doing things one after the other. Every moment of a persons life still exists, and we just feel like we are going through our lives, when in actuality every event that has ever happened and ever will happen are always in existance.

This can be compared to the analogy of looking at a person's life in a picture book. if you compile all the pictures taken of a person, from birth to death, those pictures will be existent at the same "time". as you flip through the book, you are going through the person's life. However, you know that what you see is not happening as you see it. I think it is a real possibility that this is how our universe exists.

Of course with my theory, time travel would not work the way we think it would. if you travel back in time, you would not have your current mindset traveling back too. Your whole memory will also be rewound, knowing nothing of what is going to happen, and your body moving back to where it was originally at this time. That was worded badly, but essentially it would be re-experiencing what you already have experienced, except you dont even know that.

Well, thats just my theory, put together from bits and pieces of science articles i have read and a little bit of what i thought myself.

 

[MetalManCPA]

Canned Leech:

Interesting theory. I remember as a kid, I would dream I was sitting in a car, and everything but the car was moving.

I guess I can clearly visualize your theory.

But alas, I am a scientific imbesile. I read, go "sounds good", and move on, never really taking all factors into consideration.

 

[Zerokelvin]

Hmm
Well technically what is the 4th dimension is unimportant.
Although I think some theories tell that every force in the universe (atomic, electric, gravity, etc...) can be resolved from a single uninfying force if you go up to something like the 16th or the 24th dimension (actually I don't remember the numbers...but it works with one or the other but not any number in between).
Basicly most of those dimensions are just mathematical conception of things...

 

[HoserHellspawn]

Ummm... what I can give you for my notions of time (generally refered to as the 4th dimension, yes) are based on the laments-terms/in "english" breakdown of the underlying ideals of Einstien's Theory of Relativity I learned in Grade 11 physics. (I'm assuming most people here know all about this stuff and what I'm writing is child's play, but to get everyone at least somewhat up to speed...)

Time and Space are linked... this "space-time continuum" they always talk about on Star Trek. Basically, we are always travelling through space and time and the faster you travel through one, the slower through the other. Einstein's breakthrough mathematical realization, I recall, was that Time isn't a constant, (the speed of light is the constant), but rather, a variable.

The simplest example being that of the twins... one (brother A)stays on Earth and the other (brother B) travels through space for awhile at really high speeds (he goes for a cruise to Jupiter, whatever) and when Brother B gets back, he is dramatically YOUNGER than brother A. Why? Because as he has been travelling more through space and less through time, although relative to him (hence "Theory of Relativity"), time has been going normally, and he was gone for, say, 2 years. However, relative to the brother on earth, it's been, say, 20 years that has passed since he left. i.e. Brother B's computer's calander would read 2003 while Brother A's would read 2021.

So, how does one travel backwards in time? Even if one managed to not move through space at all (pretty much impossible, as the whole Universe as we know it is constantly moving, right?) then time would just fly for you, in that if you left earth, didn't move for awhile, and returned, it'd be significantly sooner than you expected, sooner than time was relative to you. ...But you wouldn't go backwards. So, it's probably impossible so far as we know.

...Right?

 

[Orchid]

Yeah, so far.

"Wormholes" (I don't remember the official name for them) would grant us means of travelling significant distances in time and space, provided we will some day invent the technology to create and uphold wormholes big enough. In laboratories today they go in micro- or nanometres, which isn't quite big enough for a spaceship.

Also, with the discovery of anti-matter, scientists have started to think that black holes are entrances and somewhere at the other end is a white hole, an exit..

 

[Satori]

Article:

Speed of light may change

'This has fundamental implications for our understanding of physics'
By MATT CRENSON-- The Associated Press


New observations from the world's biggest telescope indicate that one of nature's supposedly immutable constants has changed over the 15 billion-year history of the universe.

Physicists were shocked at the discovery, but pleasantly so because it suggests that new theories about how the universe works on the subatomic scale may be correct.

"This has fundamental implications for our understanding of physics," said John Webb, a professor at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.

Webb led the research team that made the discovery, which is described in a paper to be published August 27 in Physical Review Letters.

The team found that the fine structure constant -- a number that determines the strength of electromagnetic force and thus the speed of light -- may have been ever so slightly smaller billions of years ago. If true, then current theories are incorrect because they maintain that light's speed and other fundamental properties do not change in either space or time.

This is actually good news to physicists, because proposed theories can accommodate changes in the fine structure constant over time. Known as string theories, they allow either a 10- or 26-dimensional universe, rather than a 4-D one containing the three spatial dimensions plus time. The extra dimensions would be curled or folded, so they would be impossible to detect in everyday life -- or even in any physics experiment yet conducted.

"This would be a clue to help guide how you convert string theories into something relevant," said Gordon Kane, a physicist at the University of Michigan. "It's just a very nice piece of information, if it stands up."

That is a big if, said John Bahcall of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J.

"I'm quite cautious about whether to believe this result," Bahcall said.

The physicists used the world's most powerful telescope to peer at some of the most distant objects in the universe. They aimed the Keck telescope atop Hawaii's Mauna Kea at 17 different quasars, which are extremely bright objects probably associated with black holes.

The quasars are so far away -- about 12 billion light-years -- that light they produced at the dawn of the universe is only now reaching Earth.

During its long journey, the light has passed through clouds of intergalactic gas, where some of it has been absorbed. The patterns of absorption tell scientists something about the gas, and something about the light as well -- including its speed and the fine structure constant that determines how fast it goes.

"It's like a car headlight on a foggy night. The headlight shines through the fog ... and you can see the change on the background light because of the presence of the fog," Webb said.

The scientists hope to confirm their results using a different telescope, perhaps the Very Large Telescope at the European Southern Observatory in Chile.

 

[Satori]

Originally posted by HoserHellspawn
So, how does one travel backwards in time? Even if one managed to not move through space at all (pretty much impossible, as the whole Universe as we know it is constantly moving, right?) then time would just fly for you, in that if you left earth, didn't move for awhile, and returned, it'd be significantly sooner than you expected, sooner than time was relative to you. ...But you wouldn't go backwards. So, it's probably impossible so far as we know.

...Right?

At the speed of c time stops, so if c was broken, maybe time would flow backwards?

At any rate, humans going back in time or not does not invalidate the idea that particles can. We must not compare apples to oranges as so many like to do when talking about time travel. Everyone seems to want to personify time travel with thought of killing one's grandpa and such and I feel this is almost entirely missing the point of the discussion. Oh well, hehe

cheers,

Sacreligious Satori

 

[Johan]

Hell no, it's an album by Hypocrisy

 

[Itay]

Originally posted by Johan
Hell no, it's an album by Hypocrisy

you mean, an album by STRATOVARIUS...

 

[Johan]

Originally posted by Itay



you mean, an album by STRATOVARIUS...

No, I mean Hypocrisy