I have no problem with "lack of a Time dimension" but there must still remain at least one additional spatial dimension. The fact that we are confined into a 3 dimensional plane only makes the detection more difficult. What we refer to as future and past becomes blurred by gamma when an object is accelerated toward C or encounters Casimir geometry. Lorentz contraction and the size of time quantum vary such that the observer and the observed both see a portion of the other's space as time [making it contract and dilate]. The fact that all inertial frames remain unaware locally of any dilation or contraction indicate to me that all dimensions are equally spatial but that we are somehow confined like flatlanders on a chalk board. IMHO future and past are a single spatial dimension on either side of our plane always appearing 90 degrees displaced but gamma reveals that our plane rotates into this dimension thru relative measure between different inertial frames. Perhaps 2D flatlanders would experience 2 "temporal" axis, the one we share and the other being how flatlanders would perceive motion of their chalk board in our 3D world.
Fran Mauro Lacy Sat, 14 May 2011 12:48:58 -0700 On 04/26/2011 01:02 PM, Alan J Fletcher wrote: At 10:50 PM 4/25/2011, Mark Iverson wrote: > FYI: > Here's an article for all you theorists... > "Scientists suggest spacetime has no time dimension" > http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-04-scientists-spacetime-dimension.html > -Mark No problem ... progressing from one state to another is pretty much what Loop Quantum Gravity does. We already have a whole bunch of 'emergent' properties (heat ... and possibly gravity), so having time as 'emergent' isn't SUCH a big deal. It certainly isn't. But the point is that it clarifies a lot of things to see time in this way. Suddenly some "magic" properties of "time", like time dilation, are simply explained as changes in velocity with respect to a preferred frame. Unfortunately it probably does away with one of my 'favorite' cosmologies, where we are twisting in a 4D+ space-time, so that individual dimensions can change from space-like to time-like. Space and time are probably both sides of the same coin: movement. Time can be understood as movement, or better said, rate of movement. Space in turn can be understood as movement: very specific forms of movement produce or develop space in physical terms. They lay out space, so to speak.
