Albert Einstein and the Fabric of Time Homepage | Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Forward | Contents | e-mail Unfortunately it is very much a reality still today that the works of the really great spirits in science, such as Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, and Stephen Hawking, and their most fundamental conclusions about the universe, remain unappreciated, even unnoticed by the majority of scientists. These three giants all made very similar conclusions regarding the timelessness of the Universe, yet even today the science of timelessness is overlooked. ï¿½Time has no independent existence apart from the order of events by which we measure it.ï¿½ ï¿½Albert Einstein The People of Timelessness Albert Einstein Stephen Hawking Hugh Everett David Bohm Albert Einstein and the Fabric of Time Surprising as it may be to most non-scientists and even to some scientists, Albert Einstein concluded in his later years that the past, present, and future all exist simultaneously.

In 1952, in his book Relativity, in discussing Minkowski's Space World interpretation of his theory of relativity, Einstein writes: Since there exists in this four dimensional structure [space-time] no longer any sections which represent "now" objectively, the concepts of happening and becoming are indeed not completely suspended, but yet complicated. It appears therefore more natural to think of physical reality as a four dimensional existence, instead of, as hitherto, the evolution of a three dimensional existence. Einstein's belief in an undivided solid reality was clear to him, so much so that he completely rejected the separation we experience as the moment of now. He believed there is no true division between past and future, there is rather a single existence. His most descriptive testimony to this faith came when his lifelong friend Besso died. Einstein wrote a letter to Besso's family, saying that although Besso had preceded him in death it was of no consequence, "...for us physicists believe the separation between past, present, and future is only an illusion, although a convincing one." Most everyone knows that Einstein proved that time is relative, not absolute as Newton claimed.

With the proper technology, such as a very fast spaceship, one person is able to experience several days while another person simultaneously experiences only a few hours or minutes. The same two people can meet up again, one having experienced days or even years while the other has only experienced minutes. The person in the spaceship only needs to travel near to the speed of light. The faster they travel, the slower their time will pass relative to someone planted firmly on the Earth. If they were able to travel at the speed of light, their time would cease completely and they would only exist trapped in timelessness. Einstein could hardly believe there were physicists who didnï¿½t believe in timelessness, and yet the wisdom of Einstein's convictions had very little impact on cosmology or science in general. The majority of physicists have been slow to give up the ordinary assumptions we make about time. The two most highly recognized physicists since Einstein made similar conclusions and even made dramatic advances toward a timeless perspective of the universe, yet they also were unable to change the temporal mentality ingrained in the mainstream of physics and society. Einstein was followed in history by the colorful and brilliant Richard Feynman.

Feynman developed the most effective and explanatory interpretation of quantum mechanics that had yet been developed, known today as Sum over Histories. Just as Einstein's own Relativity Theory led Einstein to reject time, Feynmanï¿½s Sum over Histories theory led him to describe time simply as a direction in space. Feynmanï¿½s theory states that the probability of an event is determined by summing together all the possible histories of that event. For example, for a particle moving from point A to B we imagine the particle traveling every possible path, curved paths, oscillating paths, squiggly paths, even backward in time and forward in time paths. Each path has an amplitude, and when summed the vast majority of all these amplitudes add up to zero, and all that remains is the comparably few histories that abide by the laws and forces of nature. Sum over histories indicates the direction of our ordinary clock time is simply a path in space which is more probable than the more exotic directions time might have taken otherwise. Other worlds are just other directions in space, some less probable, some equally as probable as the one direction we experience. And some times our world represents the unlikely path.

Feynman's summing of all possible histories could be described as the first timeless description of a multitude of space-time worlds all existing simultaneously. In a recent paper entitled Cosmology From the Top Down, Professor Stephen Hawking of Cambridge writes; ï¿½Some people make a great mystery of the multi universe, or the Many-Worlds interpretation of quantum theory, but to me, these are just different expressions of the Feynman path integral.ï¿½ (below is not in book) What is still not quite resolved in modern physics is how to properly combine Quantum theory with Einstein's Relativity Theory. It appears evident that time is purely a direction in space but how then do we explain the uncertainty of quantum mechanics? Why does it appear that God plays dice with the world. The two theories, each having been proven by their usefulness, do of course tell the same story about this one universe, but we just haven't learned yet to hear the story right. The best modern theory going is probably the No Boundary Proposal, put fourth by Stephen Hawking and Jim Hartle. This theory introduces a second reference of time which has been inappropriately named Imaginary time.

Hawking, writes of the no boundary proposal, "The universe would be completely self contained and not affected by anything outside itself. It would neither be created nor destroyed. It would just BE." In my book Everything Forever, and here at my website, I explain how fourth dimensional spatial directions travel through a series of independent three dimensional block-like spaces, which in science we call states, but they can also be thought of simply as patterns. Hawking has already proposed that imaginary time can be found at right angles to ordinary time. I further explain that it is possible in an objective way to understand the universe to be like a book or a movie film. Each moment is a separate universe just like each frame of a movie or page of a book is separate. Yet those separate states simultaneously form the larger whole of the movie or the book. Seeing each moment as a continually existing place sheds light on why particles would then travel as a quantum wave, rather than linearly from point a to point b. This is explained better elsewhere, but if each moment of ordinary time is a solid, static, "block of now", or field of space, then time each new moment is a distinctly different universe.

What we call time is a spatial direction that travels through many static three dimensional universes. In such a model, what we call time is created purely out of space. Special directions in space travel through each static three dimensional space, therein producing a new realm of space beyond three dimensions, which we call time. The interesting quality this produces, is how the inhabitants of this fourth dimension of space travel a linear path from past to future, but the surrounding environment of each path is shifting from one pattern to the next. This sends particles from one position in four dimensional space to the next without moving linearly. As a result, each individual observer in the fourth dimension experiences a continuous linear time, even though everything in their immediate environment is moving sequentially from place to place. Hence each temporal environment of four dimensional space is constructed relative to each independent observer. One can imagine oneself smoothly traveling a direct and interconnected path through time, but in looking around at one's environment, one sees that all other directions of time are broken, causing particles to appear to sequentially leap from one place to another. Paradoxically, everyone observes their own path and experience of time to be linear, while all else around them is sequential.

In fact, when we explore time as a direction through many 3D spaces , we find qualities of curvature, time dilation, and spatial contraction, precisely as relativity describes those qualities within our own spacetime. There is one quote I have found from Einstein which is more or less a contemplative mental thought about the notion of infinite spaces, which doesn't directly relate to my own approach of describing a shape to all possible spaces, but it does at least open up the subject of an infinite number of spaces to speculation. And it also shows the open minded nature of Einstein's thoughts about empty space, which some have thought were closed. When a smaller box s is situated, relativity at rest, inside the hollow space of a larger box S, then the hollow space of s is a part of the hollow space of S, and the same "space," which contains both of them, belongs to each of the boxes. When s is in motion with respect to S, however, the concept is less simple. One is then inclined to think that s encloses always the same space, but a variable part of the space S.

It then becomes necessary to apportion to each box its particular space, not thought of as bounded, and assume that these two spaces are in motion with respect to each other... Before one has become aware of this complication, space appears as an unbounded medium or container in which material objects swim around. But it must be remembered that there is an infinite number of spaces, which are in motion with respect to each other... The concept of space as something existing objectively and independent of things belongs to pre-scientific thought, but not so the idea of the existence of an infinite number of spaces in motion relatively to each other. This latter idea is indeed unavoidable, but is far from having played a considerable role even in scientific thought. I can testify that Einstein's speculations revealed here concerning infinite spaces in motion do at least carry us in the right direction in how they suggest space might have an unseen and possibly infinite content. Similar ideas were introduced by David Bohm, who claimed there are two kinds of order in nature , what he called explicate order and implicate order. Implicate order for Bohm was a way of acknowledging how quantum mechanics reveals a hidden order where our world is influenced by the whole of all possible states .

However, that order is much more visible than Bohm ever realized, as explained in part two. Unfortunately it wasn't until Einstein died that scientists began to consider the a Many Worlds Theory in science. It's safe to say that in Einstein's time we were still getting used to the idea of the Big Bang, adjusting to the ever more visible vast sea of other galaxies, and the possibility of alien life on other planets. The universe and reality were still primarily considered purely solid and material based. Quantum theory, which eventually led to the theory of many worlds, had not yet fully withstood the test of time. Einstein even rejected its implications, saying "God does not play dice" with the world, even as he himself established that there is more to the universe than a single evolving moment of now. In my explorations of timelessness I reveal that ordinary space is not merely full of other empty spaces, but empty space is actually the whole of all physical realities; all the universes of the many worlds theory. Profound as it may be, if the theories I propose are correct, space is full, rather than empty. Material things are less than the fullness of space.

In fact, it may be that space must include all possibilities in order to seem empty to us. So in summary, the universe we see is just a fragment nested in a timeless (everything) whole, rather than a single material world magically arisen above some primordial nothing. All universes exist without beginning or end in the ultimate arena of time, and each moment we experience exists forever. Find out more about timelessness at: Ch27 God, Infinity, and Nature As One This page last updated April 10th, 2007. References [1] Einstein, Albert, Relativity; The Special and the General Theory. Crown Trade Paperbacks (1961). [2] Einstein, Albert, Letter to Michele Besso's Family. Ref. Bernstein, Jeremy., A Critic at Large: Besso. The New Yorker (1989). [3] Feynman, Richard, P., Quantum Mechanics and Path Integrals. Mcgraw Hill, New York (1965). [4] Hawking, Stephen W., Cosmology from the Top Down. [ arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0305562 ] (2003).

[5] Hawking, Stephen W., Hartle, James B., Wave function of the Universe. Phys. Rev. D 28, 2960 (1983). [6] Hawking, Stephen W., A Brief History of Time. Bantam (1988). Your welcome to send an e-mail and share your thoughts when you're done reading. GP-B — Einstein's Spacetime Relational or Absolute? Special Relativity Physics at the end of the nineteenth century found itself in crisis: there were perfectly good theories of mechanics (Newton) and electromagnetism (Maxwell), but they did not seem to agree. Light was known to be an electromagnetic phenomenon, but it did not obey the same laws of mechanics as matter. Experiments by Albert A. Michelson (1852-1931) and others in the 1880s showed that it always traveled with the same velocity, regardless of the speed of its source. Older physicists struggled with this contradiction in various ways. In 1892 George F. FitzGerald (1851-1901) and Hendrik A.

Lorentz (1853-1928) independently found that they could reconcile theory and experiment if they postulated that the detector apparatus was changing its size and shape in a characteristic way that depended on its state of motion. In 1898, J. Henri Poincaré (1854-1912) suggested that intervals of time, as well as length, might be observer-dependent, and he even speculated (in 1904) that the speed of light might be an "unsurpassable limit". Michelson Einstein in 1905 None of these eminent physicists, however, put the whole story together. That was left to the young Albert Einstein (1879-1955), who already began approaching the problem in a new way at the age of sixteen (1895-6) when he wondered what it would be like to travel along with a light ray. By 1905 he had shown that FitzGerald and Lorentz's results followed from one simple but radical assumption: the laws of physics and the speed of light must be the same for all uniformly moving observers, regardless of their state of relative motion.

For this to be true, space and time can no longer be independent. Rather, they are "converted" into each other in such a way as to keep the speed of light constant for all observers. (This is why moving objects appear to shrink, as suspected by FitzGerald and Lorentz, and why moving observers may measure time differently, as speculated by Poincaré.) Space and time are relative (i.e., they depend on the motion of the observer who measures them) — and light is more fundamental than either. This is the basis of Einstein's theory of special relativity ("special" refers to the restriction to uniform motion). Lightcone diagram showing the worldline of a moving observer Einstein did not quite finish the job, however. Contrary to popular belief, he did not draw the conclusion that space and time could be seen as components of a single four-dimensional spacetime fabric.

That insight came from Hermann Minkowski (1864-1909), who announced it in a 1908 colloquium with the dramatic words: "Henceforth space by itself, and time by itself, are doomed to fade away into mere shadows, and only a kind of union of the two will preserve an independent reality". Four-dimensional Minkowski spacetime is often pictured in the form of a two-dimensional lightcone diagram, with the horizontal axes representing "space" (x) and the vertical axis "time" (ct). The walls of the cone are defined by the evolution of a flash of light passing from the past (lower cone) to the future (upper cone) through the present (origin). All of physical reality is contained within this cone; the region outside ("elsewhere") is inaccessible because one would have to travel faster than light to reach it. The trajectories of all real objects lie along "worldlines" inside the cone (like the one shown here in red). The apparently static nature of this picture, in which history does not seem to "happen" but is rather "already there", has given writers and philosophers a new way to think about old issues involving determinism and free will.

Einstein initially dismissed Minkowski's four-dimensional interpretation of his theory as "superfluous learnedness" (Abraham Pais, Subtle is the Lord..., 1982). To his credit, however, he changed his mind quickly. The language of spacetime (known technically as tensor mathematics) proved to be essential in deriving his theory of general relativity. Einstein's happiest thought (1907): "For an observer falling freely from the roof of a house, the gravitational field does not exist" (left). Conversely (right), an observer in a closed box—such as an elevator or spaceship—cannot tell whether his weight is due to gravity or acceleration. Soon after completing his special theory, Einstein had the "happiest thought of his life" (1907). It came while he was sitting in his chair at the patent office in Bern and wondering what it would be like to try to drop a ball while falling off the side of a building. Einstein realized that a person who accelerates downward along with the ball will not be able to detect the effects of gravity on it.

An observer can "transform away" gravity (at least in the immediate neighborhood) simply by moving to this accelerated frame of reference — no matter what kind of object is dropped. Gravitation is (locally) equivalent to acceleration. This is the principle of equivalence. To understand how remarkable the equivalence principle really is, imagine how it would be if gravity worked like other forces. If gravity were like electricity, for example, then balls with more charge would be attracted to the earth more strongly, and hence fall down more quickly than balls with less charge. (Balls whose charge was of the same sign as the earth's would even "fall" upwards.) There would be no way to transform away such effects by moving to the same accelerated frame of reference for all objects. But gravity is "matter-blind" — it affects all objects the same way. From this fact Einstein leapt to the spectacular inference that gravity does not depend on the properties of matter (as electricity, for example, depends on electric charge). Rather the phenomenon of gravity must spring from some property of spacetime. Back to Top Gravity as Curved Spacetime Einstein eventually identified the property of spacetime which is responsible for gravity as its curvature.

Space and time in Einstein's universe are no longer flat (as implicitly assumed by Newton) but can pushed and pulled, stretched and warped by matter. Gravity feels strongest where spacetime is most curved, and it vanishes where spacetime is flat. This is the core of Einstein's theory of general relativity, which is often summed up in words as follows: "matter tells spacetime how to curve, and curved spacetime tells matter how to move". A standard way to illustrate this idea is to place a bowling ball (representing a massive object such as the sun) onto a stretched rubber sheet (representing spacetime). If a marble is placed onto the rubber sheet, it will roll toward the bowling ball, and may even be put into "orbit" around the bowling ball. This occurs, not because the smaller mass is "attracted" by a force emanating from the larger one, but because it is traveling along a surface which has been deformed by the presence of the larger mass. In the same way gravitation in Einstein's theory arises not as a force propagating through spacetime, but rather as a feature of spacetime itself.

According to Einstein, your weight on earth is due to the fact that your body is traveling through warped spacetime! Computer animation showing Newton's conception of space & time Computer animation showing Einstein's conception of spacetime While intuitively appealing, however, the rubber-sheet picture has its limitations. Mostly, these have to do with the fact that it allows us to visualize the spatial aspect of Einstein's theory, but not the temporal one. To see this, we need only remember that Newtonian gravity must be approximately valid, whatever Einstein says, and Newton tells us that bodies move in straight lines unless acted upon by a force. Why, then, do the orbits of planets around the sun on the rubber sheet appear so far from straight, if there is no attracting force reaching out through spacetime to tug on them? The answer is that planetary trajectories are very nearly straight — in spacetime, not space. The worldline of the earth, for example, resembles a stretched-out spiral whose width in space is only one astronomical unit, but whose length in the time direction is measured in lightyears!

Another way to appreciate the importance of the "time" in "spacetime" is to apply the equivalence principle and ask whether the fact that we experience a gravitational field on the earth's surface is "equivalent" to stating that the earth's surface is continually accelerating outward. Obviously not, for we do not observe the earth to grow larger! The trouble is that, in speaking of the earth's surface, we have again lapsed into thinking of acceleration in spatial terms. On earth, where speeds are small compared to the speed of light and the gravitational field is weak, it turns out that nearly all of our weight arises due to the warping of time, rather than space. What this means in practice is that gravity on earth is "equivalent" to acceleration mostly in the sense that clocks on the surface run more slowly than clocks in outer space. Back to Top General Relativity General relativity is based physically on the equivalence principle, but the theory also has a second, more mathematical foundation. Known as the principle of general covariance, it is the requirement that the law of gravitation be the same for all observers — even accelerating ones — regardless of the coordinates in which it is described.

(It is for this reason that Einstein named his new theory "general", as opposed to "special" relativity — he dropped the earlier restriction to uniformly moving observers.) This proved to be the most difficult challenge that Einstein ever faced. As he later said, to express physical laws without coordinates is like "describing thoughts without words". Einstein was obliged to master the abstract mathematics of surfaces and their description in terms of tensors, a field pioneered by Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855) and generalized to higher dimensions and more abstract spaces by Georg Friedrich Bernard Riemann (1826-1866). In this labor he was aided above all by his friend the mathematician Marcel Grossmann (1878-1936). Another mathematician named David Hilbert (1862-1943) nearly beat him to his final equations. Gauss Einstein in 1916 But general relativity is above all Einstein's achievement, and the phrase "Einstein's spacetime" is entirely appropriate. No theory of comparable significance before or since is more nearly due to the struggle of a single scientist.

At the end of 1915 Einstein wrote to a friend that he had succeeded at last, and that he was "content but rather worn out". He later described this period as follows: "The years of searching in the dark for a truth that one feels but cannot express, the intense desire and the alternations of confidence and misgiving until one breaks through to clarity and understanding, are known only to those who have themselves experienced them". Relational or Absolute? In 1918, Einstein described Mach's principle as a philosophical pillar of general relativity, along with the physical principle of equivalence and the mathematical pillar of general covariance. This characterization is now widely regarded as wishful thinking. Einstein was undoubtedly inspired by Mach's relational views, and he hoped that his new theory of gravitation would "secure the relativization of inertia" by binding spacetime so tightly to matter that one could not exist without the other. In fact, however, the equations of general relativity are perfectly consistent with spacetimes that contain no matter at all. Flat (Minkowski) spacetime is a trivial example, but empty spacetime can also be curved, as demonstrated by Willem de Sitter in 1916.

There are even spacetimes whose distant reaches rotate endlessly around the sky relative to an observer's local inertial frame (as discovered by Kurt Gödel in 1949). The bare existence of such solutions in Einstein's theory shows that it cannot be Machian in the strict sense; matter and spacetime remain logically independent. The term "general relativity" is thus something of a misnomer, as pointed out by Hermann Minkowski and others. The theory does not make spacetime more relative than it was in special relativity. Just the opposite is true: the absolute space and time of Newton are retained. They are merely amalgamated and endowed with a more flexible mathematical skeleton (the metric tensor). Nevertheless, Einstein's theory of gravity represents a major swing back toward the relational view of space and time, in that it answers the objection of the ancient Stoics. Space and time do act on matter, by guiding the way it moves. And matter does act back on spacetime, by producing the curvature that we feel as gravity. Beyond that, matter can act on spacetime in a manner that is very much in the spirit of Mach's principle.

Calculations by Hans Thirring (1888-1979), Josef Lense (1890-1985) and others have shown that a large rotating mass will "drag" an observer's inertial reference frame around with it. This is the phenomenon of frame-dragging, whose existence Gravity Probe B is designed to detect. The same calculations suggest that, if the entire contents of the universe were to rotate, our local inertial frame would undergo "perfect dragging" — that is, we would not notice it, because we would be rotating too! In that sense, general relativity is indeed nearly as relational as Mach might have wished. Some physicists (such as Julian Barbour) have gone further and asserted that general relativity is in fact perfectly Machian. If one goes beyond classical physics and into modern quantum field theory, then questions of absolute versus relational spacetime are rendered anachronistic by the fact that even "empty space" is populated by matter in the form of virtual particles, zero-point fields and more. Within the context of Einstein's universe, however, the majority view is perhaps best summed up as follows: Spacetime behaves relationally but exists absolutely.

James Overduin, November 2007 Can our brains see the fourth dimension? | HowStuffWorks Can our brains see the fourth dimension? Fourth-dimention analogy © 2010 HowStuffWorks.com The success of 2009's "Avatar" demonstrates that moviegoers appreciate the difference between 2-D and 3-D , and they're willing to pay a little more for an upgrade. Most of us are accustomed to watching 2-D; even though characters on the screen appear to have depth and texture, the image is actually flat. But when we put on those 3-D glasses, we see a world that has shape, a world that we could walk in. We can imagine existing in such a world because we live in one. The things in our daily life have height, width and length. But for someone who's only known life in two dimensions, 3-D would be impossible to comprehend. And that, according to many researchers, is the reason we can't see the fourth dimension, or any other dimension beyond that. Physicists work under the assumption that there are at least 10 dimensions, but the majority of us will never "see" them.

Because we only know life in 3-D, our brains don't understand how to look for anything more. In 1884, Edwin A. Abbot published a novel that depicts the problem of seeing dimensions beyond your own. In "Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions," Abbot describes the life of a square in a two-dimensional world. Living in 2-D means that the square is surrounded by circles, triangles and rectangles, but all the square sees are other lines. One day, the square is visited by a sphere. On first glance, the sphere just looks like a circle to the square, and the square can't comprehend what the sphere means when he explains 3-D objects. Eventually, the sphere takes the square to the 3-D world, and the square understands. He sees not just lines, but entire shapes that have depth. Emboldened, the square asks the sphere what exists beyond the 3-D world; the sphere is appalled. The sphere can't comprehend a world beyond this, and in this way, stands in for the reader. Our brains aren't trained to see anything other than our world, and it will likely take something from another dimension to make us understand.

Up Next What is a dimension, and how many are there? But what is this other dimension? Mystics used to see it as a place where spirits lived, since they weren't bound by our earthly rules. In his theory of special relativity, Einstein called the fourth dimension time, but noted that time is inseparable from space. Science fiction aficionados may recognize that union as space-time, and indeed, the idea of a space-time continuum has been popularized by science fiction writers for centuries [source: Overbye ]. Einstein described gravity as a bend in space-time. Today, some physicists describe the fourth dimension as any space that's perpendicular to a cube -- the problem being that most of us can't visualize something that is perpendicular to a cube [source: Cole ]. Researchers have used Einstein's ideas to determine whether we can travel through time. While we can move in any direction in our 3-D world, we can only move forward in time. Thus, traveling to the past has been deemed near-impossible, though some researchers still hold out hope for finding wormholes that connect to different sections of space-time [source: Goudarzi ].

If we can't use the fourth dimension to time travel, and if we can't even see the fourth dimension, then what's the point of knowing about it? Understanding these higher dimensions is of importance to mathematicians and physicists because it helps them understand the world. String theory, for example, relies upon at least 10 dimensions to remain viable [source: Groleau ]. For these researchers, the answers to complex problems in the 3-D world may be found in the next dimension -- and beyond. 1 enter the fourth dimension The fourth dimension is, simply, something beyond our comprehension. Or maybe, everything. As a mathematical possibility, the fourth dimension begins with Euclid's Fifth Postulate, which outlines the following proof: According to this model, there are only three dimensions of linear direction: variations of up, right, and forward. In other words, height, length, and width. But even with all the practicality of Euclid's model, the concept cannot be mathematically proven, opening the doorway to another fourth direction. This is the possibility laid out by Einstein's Theory of Relativity, which positions space as a curved, non-linear phenomenon.

In other words, there may be not only a fourth, but many 'directions' we can't readily conceptualize. That is the question. In many ways, it's in a direction we can't even point to. Still, the possibilities and implications are so staggering that the pursuit of the fourth dimension is not an endeavor to be dismissed. Some have defined the elusive fourth direction as time, but even though time is a direction of sorts, time is more of a function of the fourth dimension as opposed to its definition. Because of the nature of a 'new space', we may be able to see it only as a time-based phenomenon. But even viewing the fourth dimension as time-based only gives us a limited perspective. As Euclid's failed model shows, science can only go so far to explore this undiscovered country -- there must be other ways to get there. As an unknown, unsignifiable quantity, the fourth dimension emerges as not only an impetus for, but as an exercise and test for art. As ideas about the fourth dimension begin to form in the early half of the century, the parallel movements in Modernist art and literature cannot be consigned to mutually-exclusive spaces.

Within this context, Modernist art and literature can be looked at for their own definitions of what this fourth dimension might look like, signify, be. click to fourth dimension go "Space is 4D" -- Theory Claims that Time is Not the 4th Dimension - The Daily Galaxy --Great Discoveries Channel "Space is 4D" -- Theory Claims that Time is Not the 4th Dimension Einstein never interpreted time "t" as a fourth dimension of space. Space is not 3D + T, space is 4D. With clocks we measure numerical order of material change. This numerical order is the only time that exists in a physical world. With this approach all immediate information transfers of quantum physics are explained in a more appropriate way. 4D space is a medium of quantum information transfers. Scientists at the Scientific Research Centre Bistra in Ptuj, Slovenia, theorize that this Newtonian idea of time as an absolute quantity that flows on its own, along with the idea that time is the fourth dimension of spacetime, are incorrect. They propose to replace these concepts of time with a view that corresponds more accurately to the physical world: time as a measure of the numerical order of change.

In April of 2011, in two papers in Physics Essays, Amrit Sorli, Davide Fiscaletti, and Dusan Klinar, begin by explaining how we usually assume that time is an absolute physical quantity that plays the role of the independent variable (time, t, is often the x-axis on graphs that show the evolution of a physical system). But, as they note, we never really measure t. What we do measure is an object’s frequency and speed. But, by itself, t has only a mathematical value, and no primary physical existence. This view doesn’t mean that time does not exist, but that time has more to do with space than with the idea of an absolute time. So while 4D spacetime is usually considered to consist of three dimensions of space and one dimension of time, the researchers’ view suggests that it’s more correct to imagine spacetime as four dimensions of space. In other words, as they say, the Universe is “timeless.” “Minkowski space is not 3D + T, it is 4D,” the scientists write in their most recent paper.

“The point of view which considers time to be a physical entity in which material changes occur is here replaced with a more convenient view of time being merely the numerical order of material change. This view corresponds better to the physical world and has more explanatory power in describing immediate physical phenomena: gravity, electrostatic interaction, information transfer by EPR experiment are physical phenomena carried directly by the space in which physical phenomena occur.” “The idea of time being the fourth dimension of space did not bring much progress in physics and is in contradiction with the formalism of special relativity,” he said. “We are now developing a formalism of 3D quantum space based on Planck's work. It seems that the Universe is 3D from the macro to the micro level to the Planck volume, which per formalism is 3D. In this 3D space there is no ‘length contraction,’ there is no ‘time dilation.’ What really exists is that the velocity of material change is ‘relative’ in the Einstein sense.” The researchers give an example of this concept of time by imagining a photon that is moving between two points in space. The distance between these two points is composed of Planck distances, each of which is the smallest distance that the photon can move.

(The fundamental unit of this motion is Planck time.) When the photon moves a Planck distance, it is moving exclusively in space and not in absolute time, the researchers explain. The photon can be thought of as moving from point 1 to point 2, and its position at point 1 is “before” its position at point 2 in the sense that the number 1 comes before the number 2 in the numerical order. Numerical order is not equivalent to temporal order, i.e., the number 1 does not exist before the number 2 in time, only numerically. Without using time as the fourth dimension of spacetime, the physical world can be described more accurately. As physicist Enrico Prati noted in a recent study, Hamiltonian dynamics (equations in classical mechanics) is robustly well-defined without the concept of absolute time. Other scientists have pointed out that the mathematical model of spacetime does not correspond to physical reality, and propose that a timeless “state space” provides a more accurate framework. The scientists also investigated the falsifiability of the two notions of time.

The concept of time as the fourth dimension of space -- as a fundamental physical entity in which an experiment occurs -- can be falsified by an experiment in which time does not exist, according to the scientists. An example of an experiment in which time is not present as a fundamental entity is the Coulomb experiment; mathematically, this experiment takes place only in space. On the other hand, in the concept of time as a numerical order of change taking place in space, space is the fundamental physical entity in which a given experiment occurs. Although this concept could be falsified by an experiment in which time (measured by clocks) is not the numerical order of material change, such an experiment is not yet known. “Newton theory on absolute time is not falsifiable; you cannot prove it or disprove it -- you have to believe in it,” Sorli said. “The theory of time as the fourth dimension of space is falsifiable and in our last article we prove there are strong indications that it might be wrong.

On the basis of experimental data, time is what we measure with clocks: with clocks we measure the numerical order of material change, i.e., motion in space.” In addition to providing a more accurate description of the nature of physical reality, the concept of time as a numerical order of change can also resolve Zeno’s paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise. In this paradox, the faster Achilles gives the Tortoise a head start in the race. But although Achilles can run 10 times faster than the Tortoise, he can never surpass the Tortoise because, for every distance unit that Achilles runs, the Tortoise also runs 1/10 that distance. So whenever Achilles reaches a point where the Tortoise has been, the Tortoise has also moved slightly ahead. Although the conclusion that Achilles can never surpass the Tortoise is obviously false, there are many different proposed explanations for why the argument is flawed. The paradox can be resolved by redefining velocity, so that the velocity of both runners is derived from the numerical order of their motion, rather than their displacement and direction in time. From this perspective, Achilles and the Tortoise move through space only, and Achilles can surpass Tortoise in space, though not in absolute time.

Some recent studies have challenged the theory that the brain represents time with an internal “clock” that emits neural ticks (the “pacemaker-accumulator” model) and suggest that the brain represents time in a spatially distributed way, by detecting the activation of different neural populations. Although we perceive events as occurring in the past, present, or future, these concepts may just be part of a psychological frame in which we experience material changes in space. The Daily Galaxy via physorg.com and physicsessays.org Image credit: With thanks to androidsoftware.us View Today's Hot Tech News Video from IDG -Publishers of PC World, MacWorld, and Computerworld--Top Right of Page To launch the video click on the Start Arrow. Our thanks for your support! It allows us to bring you the news daily about the discoveries, people and events changing our planet and our knowledge of the Universe. EPIC: Einstein's 4-D Time Theory Confirmed by NASA - YouTube EPIC: Einstein's 4-D Time Theory Confirmed by NASA Want to watch this again later? Sign in to add this video to a playlist. Need to report the video? Sign in to report inappropriate content. The interactive transcript could not be loaded. Loading...

Rating is available when the video has been rented. This feature is not available right now. Please try again later. Uploaded on May 6, 2011 Einstein's theory of the existence of a four-dimensional space-time vortex around Earth was proven correct by a recent NASA study. Check out more 4-D videos:

Question: According to Einstein what is the Fourth Dimension?
Answer: Time