Time goes only forward, not backwards. But in space, you can move back and forth, left and right, up and down. For each space dimension, you can go in two directions. If time would work in the same way, it would be possible to travel backwards in time. But how would it be the other way around: what would it be like if in all the three space dimensions there were only one direction, like with time?
2007-07-15 06:49:14 · 7 answers · asked by Justin Case 1 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Physics
In fact space is going in just one direction...it is expanding. So our known universe is traveling in the three spatial dimensions, but only in a monotonically increasing way. The expansion has been observed as the so-called galactic red shift.
What I think you are asking is what it would mean if objects (mass) and force (the four fundamental) could be displaced or directed in a monotonically increasing direction only. (By the way, the concept of increasing and decreasing, forward and backward, and such, would be meaningless in your monotonic space.) What you are describing is a monotonic space; check this:
"also mon·o·ton·ic (mn-tnk) KEY Mathematics Designating sequences, the successive members of which either consistently increase or decrease but do not oscillate in relative value. Each member of a monotone increasing sequence is greater than or equal to the preceding member; each member of a monotone decreasing sequence is less than or equal to the preceding member." [See source.]
Clearly, there would be no closed shapes (e.g., orbits, beach balls) because they require backtracking in space. There would be no oscillations of any kind (e.g., light waves, sound) because these, too, require backtracking in space. And given life as we know it relies on exchanges of things (e.g., oxygen in CO2 out, electro-chemical exchanges between synapses), where exchange means backtracking, life as we know it would not exist.
Bottom line, your monotonic space would be totally unlike the mankind friendly universe we live in today.
2007-07-15 07:17:47 · answer #1 · answered by oldprof 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Current state of science says that time can only go in one direction, but in my mind there is no doubt the humanity will discover how to do time travel, how to travel to the past. In my mind, time does behave like the three dimensions of space, it is just that the humanity has not discovered it yet.
2007-07-15 07:12:24 · answer #2 · answered by epistemology 5 · 1⤊ 0⤋
None that i understand of. Of all the better dimensional theories, the better ones are consistently spatial dimensions. there is often in basic terms the only temporal. the 1st larger dimensional sort replaced into executed presently after Einstein did his generic theory of relativity. I forgot who did the deed, yet somebody further a fourth spatial measurement to the GTOR and ended up with an extra set of equations that have been precisely the Maxwell Equations for electro-magnetic tension. and of course 10 of the 11 dimensions for M theory are spatial. Time seems to be unique in all of them.
2016-10-21 09:20:57 · answer #3 · answered by ? 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Our PERCEPTION of the time dimension is what can only proceed in one direction.
If the time dimension were eliminated and our perception of one rectilinear spacial dimension pro ceded in only one direction, we would perceive the universe the way we view a full-body x-ray scan---one slice after another.
It is more difficult to imagine two time-like dimensions coexisting. Perhaps you would perceive a rapid succession of expanding spherical shells of the universe, revealing the interiors of objects as well as their surfaces.
2007-07-15 07:41:18 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Actually, your preferred answer is misleading although compliant with mainstream views.
My view is alternative to the mainstream.
There is actually only the one dimension of space. We divide it into three for convenience. We can analyse motion and carry out math' using three dimensions but there is only the one fundamental and this is simply VOID. So, space does not behave as you put it, at all. It is incapable of any behaviour since it is simply void, nothingness. Time on the other does behave. It forces us into the future at a rate depending on our frame of reference. It is an objective phenomenon.
2014-02-17 03:21:55 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Time is the fourth dimension.
2007-07-15 06:53:11 · answer #6 · answered by johnandeileen2000 7 · 0⤊ 1⤋
Spacetime would collapse to one-dimension and eventless.
2007-07-15 06:53:27 · answer #7 · answered by jcsuperstar714 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋