Calling all astronomy / space experts......what is space-time?

Question

Can things slip through the fabric of space-time? How?

Spelling it in simple terms for a dummy like me would be appreciated

Thanks everyone

You guys are all so smart! I can't even get through "A Brief History of Time" without having to re-read paragraphs here and there

Answer 1

Space-time is a continuum like a river. It is defined by the dimensions of the river, but also by the time that it passes in front of your view. So the space-time that passed in front of you a minute ago is not the space-time you look at this very instant. The rocks in the river represent the things contained in space-time. They occupied the space-time of a minute ago, and the space-time of the current second also. Therefore to truly define where you are in space-time you must know not only the 3 dimensions of the space that you are occupying, but you must also know the 4th dimension, the time you are occupying it. Time is the tricky aspect of this whole concept. It is not universal but is affected by many variables mostly mass and speed. As mass approaches infinity time slows and even stops. The twins paradox is even stranger if it can be any stranger. The faster you go the slower your time goes. So if two twins are separated, one staying on earth and the other occupying a space ship that goes almost the speed of light (186,000 miles a second) the twin left on earth might age 80 years while the twin who went traveling near light speed would return only a few years older. This has been actually demonstrated with cosmic rays which are high speed unstable particles. Stopped they would only last a fraction of a second, but traveling at near light speed they last a much longer time although still the same unstable particles.

Answer 2

In our everyday normal experiences, it seems as if space and time are seperate from one another and that space is the stage on which the universe plays out over a time that passes at a constant rate. However, this couldn't be further from the truth.

Space and time are connected to one another and must be because of one simple observation: the speed of light is constant to everyone, no matter how fast you are moving. Whether you are standing still or going 100 miles a minute to try to catch the light, it will still be moving away from you at the same speed. The result is that time does not pass at a constant rate and space is not an empty, non-dynamic stage.

The faster your speed, the slower time passes. It is like you are travelling into the future faster (you are literally travelling more in the time dimension than someone who is not moving at all). So, yes, time is a dimension no different than the three space dimensions in which we move freely about. However, the major difference is that we cannot, for whatever reason, freely travel in the time direction. We cannot move freely into the future (it is against our will) nor could we travel back into the past.

Everything exists as part of (but not within) space-time. It is all connected. Things cannot exist apart from space-time, and space-time cannot exist apart from the things. So I don't think it would be possible for something to slip through the 'fabric' of space-time (I don't think fabric is such a bad description). Something that might be possible: travelling into higher dimensions. This would have the appearance of someone suddenly disappearing from the universe (if someone went into a higher dimension, no one would from here would be able to see them).

Anyway, it is a difficult concept to wrap your mind around. It takes years of study and even then it still boggles the brain. Scientists are still trying to make sense of Einstein's General Relativity.

Hope this helps.

Answer 3

space time is a concept and the "fabric" does not exist in the physical sense. Its a way of saying that the three dimensional space requires the fourth dimension (time) to work. Plants cant do what they do without time, time needs to "tick" away to allow chemical processes etc to occur.

If you want an idea of what space time may look like consider a cone with the point representing the big bang, the height of the cone is the amount of time since the big bang multiplied by the speed of light. So the area of the base of the cone is the size of the space time continuum at time now. Without time the continuum would have remained just the dot. (oversimplification yes but it will do).

It is predicted that there are likely infinite universes outside of our own, possibly packed closely, so if something were to slip outside of our universe then it would go possibly to another universe or a different part of our own.

How to get there? no one knows but its possible that black holes or worm holes (if they exist) could go there. Problem is you cannot enter a black hole as time stops so you would seemingly cease to exist. Again no one knows.

Answer 4

Things can not really slip through the fabric of space-time. And space time doesn't have a fabric. That is just words used to try and make some very strange science seem less strange than it really is.

In relativity, time is mathematically treated like another spacial dimension, and the term space-time is used to describe that connection. But it is just too strange to explain simply. In fact, I really don't understand it all that well myself.

Answer 5

Since Albert Einstein came up with his theory of relativity, one of the consequence of this is that space is influenced by motion, and time slows down when you move fast. Also, very massive objects, like black holes, will stretch spatial dimentions, and will also influence the passage of time. The result of this is that one can consider time as an additional dimention to the 3 physical dimentions of space. Since we could envision moving in all 3 dimentions of space, but are essentially stuck going only one direction in time -- albeit at varying rate if one moves fast enough -- time can not be considered a dimentions like the other 3; hence "space-time" to express this duality.

What is called the "fabric" of space-time if the fact that space and time are interwoven, as I explained above. Move fast and you influence the passage of time. We do not know of any way to "slip through", although there are theories about things being rather weird inside the event's horizon of a black hole. But we are nowhere near experiencing this first hand.

Answer 6

Space-time is the combination of space and time. We live in four space-time dimensons: three spatial dimenions and one time dimension. These combine to be the four-dimensional space-time continuum we experience, in which everything we know about takes place. However, scientists have been able to demonstrate that there are multiple dimensions that we don't experience (try to imagine what two time dimensions would be like, or four space dimensions!), so possibly there is a way for things to slip through space-time. This, as far as I know, is science fiction at this point in space-time (hehe).

Answer 7

Space is 3d and time itself is a dimension.
so, Spacetime is a combination of space(3d)+ time(1d)= Spacetime which is four dimentional.
watch this vid and everything will be crystal clear.
>>>>>>>>>>>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sryrZwYguRQ