Can there be more than one time dimension?

Question

In everyday reality there are 3 spacial and 1 time dimensions
According to string theory there are 9 spacial and 1 time dimensions
According to M-theory there are 10 spacial and 1 time dimensions.

Why only 1 time dimension? Is it theoretically possible for there to be more than one time dimension?

Answer 1

I think that it is possible. Time is used to allow for the changing state of the other dimensions. Since there are three observable spacial dimensions the idea of multiple time dimensions offers some interesting insights that may help to create a TOE (theory of everything) that is simple, elegant and consistent with our observations. It may well be that gravity is equivalent to "negative time" since it appears to be a force that is working constantly to cause the universe to collapse into itself and back into the base state of the universe - as it was at the time of the big bang. The force we have been calling dark energy could be viewed as a manifestation of "positive time" - since it represents the force which causes the universe to expand outward at a ever accelerating rate.

This would mess up many other theories - but it might be consistent with Einstein's relativity and I think it makes the idea that acceleration is equivalent to mass easier to understand, especially as it relates to time dilation for the frame of the observer travelling at the speed of light, relative to time as experienced in the rest of the universe at speeds below that of light.

Such an idea also suggests that the difference between certain quarks may actually be their time polarity which could make a positron a kind of time reversed electron.

Given the relationship between the two may be time polarity it might be possible to equalize the two - perhaps by feeding enough dark energy into the counter-rotating singularity around a black hole, which then might cause it to become a sort of super-temporal space - an strange infinite singularity that could never collapse because it is already been forced 'outside' of normal time and into a special kind of zero-time space.

Who knows? Perhaps that was the cause of the big bang in a universe which existed before this one and when that universe collapsed it was the destabilizing influence that caused this one to begin.

Answer 2

Possibly but the dimension of Time can be certainly be missing.

Time dimension is missing in some of the higher dimension parallel universes. The spatial in the higher dimension merges time into a point of singularity – neither static nor dynamic. The physical existence becomes little important in the parallel universe.

It is an experience that can never be described. It is the ultimate experience of our spiritual being - the soul and the mind. Living in the parallel universe is enchanting to say the least. The spatial structures do not provide any constraint for the mind and the soul. As living beings we can get the ultimate freedom where fear, emotion and all physics disappears. Even time is non-existent there. Time dimension is important for coming back to the physical universe again.

Constraint-less universe in higher dimension - once you visit, you will never like to come back from there. Time, gravity and electromagnetic strengths are all purged into spatial structures that cannot be felt. Ask some one who had a near death experience. They will tell you how it feels after they came back touching the outer edge of one of the parallel universes.

Scientists are busy trying to understand the physics of these parallel universes where our conventional physics does not exist. They just conclude again and again that the only way to enter the parallel universes is our mind and soul. The mind and soul are the only link to these higher dimensional parallel universes. Modeling minds and souls and allowing a free non-constrained traverse on a spatial plane can simulate the feeling.

Answer 3

In some interpretations of string therory there must be. One example of extra time dimensions is in the formation of our universe (that being the hyperspace membrane that we exist on). Some theorists have suggested that the big bang was, in fact, the collission of two other membranes in hyper-space.

Inherent in the idea of such a collission is motion. A dimension of time is required for motion to occur. The generally accepted belief that our understanding of time began in the big bang, implies that the dimension of time in which the membrane's move and interact is different that our dimension of time.

Whether it is possible to be aware of, and affected by two time dimensions at once, may be something similar to the same logic of there being extra dimensions in general, where the hypertime dimension is just a milimeter beyond our comprehension.

Answer 4

Yes, of course there can. To observe a dimension, whatever it is means that one can go outside of it, therefore there can be more than one. Brane theory does allow for more than one dimension of time, but the problem at the moment is that scientists can't handle it as it involves a new way of thinking. It takes science into the realms of philosophy.

Problem is, that we will never be able to appreciate any other form of time as we are in this current time-stream.

Answer 5

If there were it would have to be at 90º to the first one.... but how to get to it?

If time is just one big lump, all happening at one and the same time (the 'block' universe theory) then time is in all directions around us.
Just around the corner the Romans are invading Britain - right now dinosaurs are feasting on their breakfasts and the star we call 'Sol' is just starting to cool and a system of planets is slowly coalescing in the vicinity.... and it is only ever now.

Answer 6

Yeah, time seems to encompass a lot of things. I would think it has a relative direction along with rules imposed by propulsion and gravity. Maybe time is spatial in that the rate of motion seems to have upper and lower limits. "Time" is just a word, our standard of measuring the speed motion requires to cause a perceived displacement.

Answer 7

Time is not really a dimension. In order for it to be called a dimension, you would have to be able to go both forward and backward in time. Since you can never go backwards in time, time is not a dimension.

Answer 8

Time is a continuum and the universe passes through it. To have multiple time dimensions, you would need parallel universes.

Answer 9

there are 2 time dimensions in M theory, ain't there?

we live in "imaginary time" i think

i think that has something to do with why probability is really probability squared

Answer 10

we ask questions like these because we are bound to words being designated for us, example like "time dimension", or "time-line", etc.

therefore i think anything is possible, just break free from of all these words and anything is possible~