/sci/ - Science & Math

>>8704127
Suppose we are in a 3-space 3-time dimensional universe, Tom wants to measure how long it takes to drop a ball from some height h to the ground.

He raises the ball to height h, let's go of it and starts his timer:
(0,0,0) after (3s,4s,12s) the ball hits the ground,

Ah, Tom has one of those old analogdirection-timers, he wanted to know the total time it took for the ball to fall, not the individual directional time.

From his timer we know the ball fell right-time for 3 seconds, then forward-time for 4 seconds and finally down-time for 12 seconds.

We can calculate that the ball took 5 seconds to fall rightforward-time. Therefore the rightforwarddown-time is 13 seconds which is our total time.


This type of universe would look differently than our own, but special relativity holds (probably) for any number of space and time dimensions. I don't know how to begin to describe it to you visually. It's like asking to describe the 4th spatial dimension. Different, but also familiar.

Note that right/forward/down could be interchangeable with any words, I just used those for making the diagram more understandable. In our universe we only experience one type of time, linear one direction forward time, but the size of the universe and limiting properties of light do allow us to peek backwards in time (at objects very far away), as yet we cannot travel there or interact with the past in any way.