OddThoughts

It is a well believed myth that we live in 3 Dimensions. If you want to know the location of any object you can give things such as Latitude, Longitude, and Elevation which should pinpoint the object(at least on the earth; there are equivlent names for the universe as well)

Of course this is a false assumption.  We live in a word of 4-Dimensions, the 4th being, of course time. We don’t often consider time as a dimension. If I ask my wife “Where did I put my wallet?”, she doesn’t have to tell me the location (X, Y, and Z)  and the time, since the time is assumed to be “now”

If I could time travel though, It mike make sense ask, where was my wallet yesterday? or where will my wallet be tommorow?

4 Dimensions can be a tricky thing to get your mind around and first glance to some it sounds paradoxical. It can also cause questions of free will. Is the future already determined? Are we not able to change it?  What keeps me from killing my parents in hte past and thus prevening myself from being born, but then how could I have time travelled in the first place?

The best analogy for understanding 4 Dimensions is actually a simple computer game cartridge/DVD game. Think of you favorite computer/console game.

If you hold the game in your hands, you can see it look at it touch it. Now imagine you are a being existing outside of hte normal 3 Dimensions.  Although you are unaware of the “outcome” of the game. This is the 4th Dimension, all that is needed for all the possible outcomes is present within that cartridge. There is no ‘magic’ to it. It’s all just a bunch of bits and bytes, that when played (when experianced) flow in time.

You see once you decide to play the game you switch your point of view. Now longer are you looking in 4 Dimensions, you now “experiance time” and there fore switch from a 4 Dimensional view to a 3 Dimensional view.

This is related, in a similar manner to the idea that the “observer” effects the expirement simply by watching it. (see: The Plausibility Agrument )

Do you remember back in high school, the debate, is light a particle or a wave? Why does it seem to have both properties?  Same problem, and it is no coincidence, for things that can move at the speed of light. Sub-atomic particles for instance essentially “exist” in 4 Dimensions, and therefore when observed, we are only observing from a 3 Dimensional point of view so they don’t exactly “behave” normally.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS