See, there you go again, pandering to the philosophers by telling then there are questions they can answer that science cannot.
yeah, got me lol. was trying to be a little too polite there. philosophical exercise = acid trip induced wild speculation
OK, Papa G. I guess you can't call this one hateful since no actual humans were referenced. But please show us your nonignorances. What is the nature of dark matter and dark energy? How did Neanderthals become extinct? Is there life on other plents? Is or was there non-DNA life? And yes, unless you want to disown relativity as well as evolution and climate science, the universe has four dimensions. That is not controversial in physics at all.
crandc The 4th dimension is not time. In a 3D video game, the software translates 3 dimensional coordinates to a 2D coordinate system and plots them. The 2D system is the screen. They can translate 4D coordinates to screen coordinates as well. The result is a tesseract: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesseract In geometry, the tesseract, also called an 8-cell or regular octachoron or cubic prism, is the four-dimensional analog of the cube; the tesseract is to the cube as the cube is to the square. Just as the surface of the cube consists of 6 square faces, the hypersurface of the tesseract consists of 8 cubical cells. The tesseract is one of the six convex regular 4-polytopes.
it is in special relativity (one dimension of a 4-dimensional spacetime manifold), which is not based on the Euclidean geometry you refer to.
It makes zero sense to consider time a 4th dimension. It is "another" dimension, but not a spacial one. You might as well call "temperature" the 4th dimension. http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblo...laims-that-time-is-not-the-4th-dimension.html FWIW Of course, the fourth dimension is the portion of the space-time continuum which the DeLorean time machine was designed to utilize when travelling to the past or the future.
I know about Minkowski space. It's taught in Physics 101 It's not 4D space. It's 3D + 1. It's 3 spatial coordinates and something like a vector.
i was just pointing out again what crandc meant. in relativity it does make sense to refer to time as a '4th dimension'. even if it is different than spatial dimensions it is still one of four there are. no biggie.
The math works because you make special case exceptions and math for the 4th dimension coordinate. Like I said, it could just as well be temperature. Consider that a 1D universe would still have time, so 1D + 1 Same for 2D universe, 2D + 1 the + 1 makes time an added dimension, but not the "4th" and not a spatial one. And I was giving crandc something to think about before making the kind of proclamations she did. For her benefit. I thought the tesseract post was one of my better ones ever.
After briefly looking into the work of the lead author mentioned here (Amrit Sorli), I would strongly caution against putting too much weight onto the paper cited here. He points out basic elements of physics theory, but layers a bunch of supposition and fluff on top. His papers are numerous, poorly edited, published in low-tier journals, and cited by almost nobody -- other than himself. All in all, he gives off a very "Deepak Chopra" kind of vibe. A great line from his paper "Replacing time with numerical order of material change resolves Zeno problems of motion": Some other representative writings: Sorli, Amrit S. "In what way are related psychological time and physical time?." Philosophical Papers and Reviews 2.1 (2010): 9-11. Sorli, Amrit, and Ilaria Sorli. "Consciousness as a research tool into space and time." Electronic Journal of Theoretical Physics 2.6 (2005): 1-5. Eternity is Now: The Theory of Atemporality
i thought Tesseract had one of the best first releases ever. unfortunately their lead singer quit after that.
Agreed. The guy is a kook. So was Carl Sagan. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRw0G3xakBg [video=youtube;nRw0G3xakBg]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRw0G3xakBg[/video]
I guess a better way to put it is... If there is a 4th spatial dimension, we'd be able to perceive its projection but not the dimension itself. Just as Sagan demonstrates a 2D being can perceive and interact with 3D objects without comprehending the true nature of those objects. The math works for Minkowski Space if you're oblivious to the dimensions beyond those we fully comprehend or perceive. The math works for euclidean space as well: 2D space: distance = (x1-x2)**2 + (y1-y2)**2 3D space: distance = (x1-x2)**2 + (y1-y2)**2 + (z1-z2)**2 &c I'd also point out that crandc first posted that there may be as many as 11 dimensions. Then she posted that time is the 4th. Finally, it still doesn't make sense to call time a 4th dimension. The 3 dimensions measure spacetime as width/height/depth. The fourth should also, but it IS (space)time.
Interestingly, a simple thought experiment seems to prove there is a 4th spatial dimension. Gravity bends space time. It has to bend perpendicular to the 3 dimensions we're familiar with. So it has to bend in a 4th dimension. Or what am I missing?
not that simple, or that easy to think about this stuff intuitively (unless you're einstein apparently). in physics dimensions aren't thought of as strictly measuring width etc; instead the space they describe is treated as a coordinate grid, and in special relativity time is essentially one coordinate on a 4 dimensional grid. in SR time is intimately tied to space in a way temperature (or whatever else you mentioned) is not, and the fact that we can directly measure time dilation with motion is evidence SR is at least an approximation of reality. 11 would have been referring to M theory (a variation/combination of string theories) which is based in 10 spatial + 1 time dimensions. you'd be right to note that it's entirely speculative at this point, though.
this is getting way over my head conceptually, but 3 dimensional space does not require a 4th spatial dimension in order to be curved. it might require a 4th spatial dimension in order to conceptualize it being curved, but again this doesn't seem to be a topic where simple intuitive thought is applicable.
So I love this stuff but I don't know much. So today, I bought 'THE FABRIC OF THE COSMOS' by Brian Greene. It's going to take me some time to read, but hopefully when this topic comes up again in the future ill have some insight.
