Time is more easily thought of as distance because it helps with our mathematical equations. Indeed, time as distance is certainly one way to look at it.

However, time is not like the rest of the spatial dimensions in that it's distance is not measured in the same units, rather it's units are measured by a made up unit to denote duration.

Rob Bryanton does a better job of explaining than I can: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfhOBevrN2U "Time is just one of the two possible directions in the 4th spatial dimension. Most scientists are willing to agree with the concept of Time Reversal Symmetry which says that Time's opposite direction is just as valid as the arrow time that we're experiencing within our universe. As per the point-line-plane postulate, my way of visualizing the dimensions uses Time Reversal Symmetry for it's reasoning.

If we define a point in the 4th dimension, let's call it "Now" then we can define a second point in an arbitrary amount of time before or after "Now" which creates a line that extends to infinity in either direction. Those two directions are Time and Anti-Time, and those two directions combined create a full spatial dimension. Talking about Time with acknowledging Anti-Time is like talking about Up without acknowledging Down.

Here's another analogy: If I were to tell you that our 3D physical world is made from length, width, depth, and forward, you'd ask why I was counting forward separately. Isn't forward already one of the possible directions within our 3D space of length, width, and depth? Of course it is. We reach the same conclusion with the 4th spatial dimension. Time, as we experience it is just one of the two possible directions that make sense within that dimension. But it does not belong in a list with length, width, and depth. This is why I suggest that the 4th spatial dimension be referred to as duration. Which means then that by the time we have counted 10 spatial dimensions, we've already considered time as being one of the possible directions within those spatial dimensions, so there's no need to count it separately.

To be clear though, this conclusion is unique to this project, so anyone taking a University class on M-Theory will continue to be told to count time separately."

Sorry to burst your 4D bubble. ;-D

Sorry to burst your 4D bubble. ;-D

Do not confuse a mathematical abstraction with reality... :-p


Mathematics is a self-consistent abstraction that can be used to describe various aspects of our reality. Yet there is no requirement that there is any 'physical correspondence' for every (or any) term in an equation.

However, mathematics is particularly powerful for conjuring up analogy and metaphor for viewing our world from alternate perspectives... Who knows what there is yet to find!


Also note that our very awareness and interaction with our universe is locked in with the passing of what we call time.

Is time continuous or a collection of discrete moments? Does time progress uniformly or not? Is there an absolute point moment of reference? And with ourselves locked within time, how can we measure or experiment to know? Can there be an 'outside' of time?


Keep searchin',
Martin

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See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Sorry to burst your 4D bubble. ;-D

Do not confuse a mathematical abstraction with reality... :-p


Mathematics is a self-consistent abstraction that can be used to describe various aspects of our reality. Yet there is no requirement that there is any 'physical correspondence' for every (or any) term in an equation.

Indeed, which is also to say that "Time as distance" through mathematical equations is also abstract, and may not have any bearing with reality.

Rob Bryanton does a better job of explaining than I can: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfhOBevrN2U "Time is just one of the two possible directions in the 4th spatial dimension.

Yes, direction is measured in units of distance. e.g. go forward 10 meters.

I see he also had to describe time as imaginary.

Next line from the wiki article

If we wished to make the time coordinate look like the space coordinates, we could treat time as imaginary: x4 = ict (this is called a Wick rotation). In this case the above equation becomes symmetric:

As to more than 4D, that isn't Einstein.

Our human 3D brains have a problem with time simply because we can't change our location on the time dimension. We must obey the law that our position in the 4D universe changes at c. Not less than c nor more than c but precisely at c.

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Rob Bryanton does a better job of explaining than I can: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfhOBevrN2U "Time is just one of the two possible directions in the 4th spatial dimension.

Yes, direction is measured in units of distance. e.g. go forward 10 meters.

Agreed, but instead of going forward 10 meters, in the 4th spatial dimension you go forward 10 seconds. Merely just units of measure so that we can better understand the dimensions above us.

I see he also had to describe time as imaginary.

He mostly deals with theoretical, and we all know that theoretical isn't indicative of reality, but that also doesn't meant hat theoretical is not reality.

Next line from the wiki article

If we wished to make the time coordinate look like the space coordinates, we could treat time as imaginary: x4 = ict (this is called a Wick rotation). In this case the above equation becomes symmetric:

As to more than 4D, that isn't Einstein.

Not completely in disagreement yet. Showing duration as distance simply helps with the math and aides in our understanding.

Our human 3D brains have a problem with time simply because we can't change our location on the time dimension. We must obey the law that our position in the 4D universe changes at c. Not less than c nor more than c but precisely at c.

Still haven't found merit in disagreement. While everything you've written is true, I haven't seen an argument that confirms that duration doesn't exist, but merely an explanation of theoretically equating duration with distance.

Time as distance doesn't wash. That's equivalent to saying a volt is the same as an ampere. They might be proportional but you need another quantity to establish the relationship. Time is distance/velocity. You may be thinking of "SPACETIME" as a single construct which would be correct.

Anyhow we were talking about relativistic effects where physical constants depend on velocity.
I think that this thread did a good job of suggesting corrections to the anomalous results. We will all follow closely the final resolution to this, I am sure.

True time is irrelevant when we know it gets compressed as we approach massive gravity wells like black holes. Measuring time should have meaning than a simple tick tock on a watch. I realize that we use atomic clocks to measure time and that radioactive decay is a much finer measuring tool than a wound spring but it again is an arbitrary mode of measuring what we see.

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In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
Diogenes Of Sinope

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/spectacular-aspects-of-neutrinos-at-or-above-speed-of-light-132441498.html

Maybe Einstein was wrong??

In September 2011 a neutrino beam from a CERN lab in Geneva, Switzerland to the 454 miles remote INFN Gran Sasso lab in Italy seemed to travel 0.0025 percent faster through the Earth than the speed of light in a vacuum. Some hitherto undisputed pillars of classical physics will totter if this experiment turns out to be repeatable. Einstein's theories actually allow the existence of non-detectable particles moving faster than the speed of light. These particles are called tachyons. However, there is no possibility to use such theoretical tachyons as a transport medium for information. Einstein's maximum information speed is strictly limited to the speed of light. The spectacular aspect of such a detectable neutrino beam would be less the discovery that neutrinos may be actually tachyons, but of an information speed beyond the speed of light barrier. As observations of supernova bursts did not register neutrino beams a long time before the arrival of the photons of these cosmic catastrophes, the experiment at CERN requires very critical consideration. Neutrinos from the supernova 1987a were detected by the Kamioka Nucleon Decay Experiment detector in Japan. The neutrinos arrived only about three hours before light from supernova event reached Earth, because of the fact that light is trapped in the supernova for a short time period. This would indicate that neutrinos rather travel at the speed of light. If the CERN results are correct, the neutrinos should have arrived years rather than hours before the supernova's light burst.

The 1987 neutrinos were first detected in the Mont Blanc Tunnel by INFN scientists four hours before the supernova was sighted. This is explained by the fact that photons spend a longer time than neutrinos in escaping from the supernova. This happened at the same time of hypothetical gravitational wave detection both in Frascati, Italy, and U.of Maryland, USA.These were not later confirmed. A second neutrino burst was detected about 5 hours later at Kamiokande, Japan, IMB in USA and Baksan in Russia.
Tullio

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The scrutiny continues.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=why-neutrinos-might-wimp-out&WT.mc_id=SA_CAT_SPC_20111117

Steve

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Warning, addicted to SETI crunching!
Crunching as a member of GPU Users Group.
GPUUG Website

Wow, the comments on that article are as fractious as we get in the politics section. Some are very passionate about the speed limit.

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60 nanoseconds ! that corresponds to 60 feet. Looks like it would be easy to make a mistake of this magnitude.

60 nanoseconds ! that corresponds to 60 feet. Looks like it would be easy to make a mistake of this magnitude.

Yes, this is why Sergio Bertolucci, the CERN Scientific Director, stresses that the result must be confirmed by experiments done in other laboratories, in USA and Japan. But detecting neutrinos is a difficult and costly matter, you need huge liquid containing vessels such as those of OPERA or ice such as the Antarctic detector.
Tullio

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Why not go back to Einstein's famous equation E=Mc2 (or E=mc2)?

If c is not a constant, the relation between mass and (corresponding) energy will not be the same as well. Where does the time factor appear / emerge / come in regarding this particular equation? Is time not a constant as well?

They've repeated the test using short bursts of neutrinos and got the same results. Now if someone somewhere else would please attempt the experiment and confirm it we'll really have something

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In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
Diogenes Of Sinope

Why not go back to Einstein's famous equation E=Mc2 (or E=mc2)?

If c is not a constant, the relation between mass and (corresponding) energy will not be the same as well. Where does the time factor appear / emerge / come in regarding this particular equation? Is time not a constant as well?

Time is not a constant. The other equation involved is the "alpha" dimensionless fine structure constant= e squared divided by (h/2pi) times c =1/137.something, where e is the electron charge, h the Planck constant and c is the speed of light. Since alpha is also the ratio between the em interaction and the strong nuclear interaction, any variation in c should mean a variation also in e or h or both to keep alpha constant.Some astronomers believe alpha not to be a constant in the universe, since they see different red shifts for different spectral lines in the same galaxy/quasar.But personally I don't believe in a variation in c (the speed of light). Maybe neutrinos are tachyons, so they can travel faster than light and have an imaginary mass.
Tullio

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A repeat of the Gran Sasso experiment shows what they are measuring is consistent and real:

Neutrinos still FASTER THAN LIGHT in second test

... The new beams were three nanoseconds long and the test left gaps of 524 nanoseconds between them, but they still confirmed the results of the first experiment. ...


So that is what they are measuring... Next is to repeat the experiment elsewhere and/or confirm the detail of how they are doing the measuring...

Is it all relative?

Do I get a beer if my wild guesses from earlier turn out to be the case?... :-)

Keep searchin',
Martin

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See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Perhaps more interesting it the C/P violation that has been found.

BTW were those neutrinos or anti-neutrinos that are FTL?

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Perhaps more interesting it the C/P violation that has been found.

BTW were those neutrinos or anti-neutrinos that are FTL?

I believe they are mu neutrinos. OPERA was meant to check the oscillation of neutrino flavors according to the Pontecorvo hypothesis. One mu neutrino has arrived as a tau neutrino. The FTL result was a side result, then the second round was refined to test it. Here is a CERN Press Release, updated:
Press release
I rather agree on the CP violation.
Tullio

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If Einstein was alive today, would he be tempted to re-write his theories I wonder?

Unlikely, My understanding is that he was very stubborn and resisted changing his theories even when he was clearly wrong

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In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
Diogenes Of Sinope