Most of us know what time is until we think about it. A ticking clock on the wrist, an alarm clock by the bed, empty calendar cells. It may seem that time is whole and one, and we all live in this flow, trying not to be late for work and pick up children from school on time. Sometimes we just look at the clock and wish there was more time in the day. There are sixty seconds in a minute, sixty minutes in an hour, twenty-four hours a day, and three hundred and sixty-five days a year. Time is one and absolute, according to Sir Isaac Newton. But what if I told you that time is an illusion, a manifestation of our understanding of causality?
If your scientific school is worth something, you probably know that there are three supposed dimensions of space and a fourth, time dimension. Four dimensions make up the entirety of the space-time continuum. Isaac Newton, one of the forefathers of modern mathematics and the inventor (or rather, the discoverer) of calculus, introduced a lot of priceless ideas into physics. Among the most important of these are the three laws of motion, which describe the relationship between objects and the forces of nature that interact with them. Another important idea - important for our discussion - is the concept of absolute space and absolute time.
Newton's laws assume that time is a constant quantity in the Universe, it flows without any external influence and is always the same for all its observers. But we know that Einstein's theory of relativity contradicts Newton's opinion. Time passes in different ways in Moscow and on Mars. It behaves differently at the foot of Fuji and at the event horizon of a black hole. Time changes as you move faster. And when it first dawned on Einstein, his vision literally changed everything we knew about physics. However, several individuals decided to take his ideas to the max.
The authors of two specific papers offer a new perspective on the space-time continuum; even more: one of the authors proposes to define the universe as "timeless", let's say.
Three physicists, Amrit Sorli, David Fiscalletti and Duzan Klinar, ask you to represent time as the X-axis on a graph; the variable will help visualize the evolution of a physical system (a physical system in our universe). We measure the frequency and speed of an object, but time is not usually measured. Moreover, its mathematical value is usually not taken into account. Essentially, we are not dealing with time as a variable, but using the movement of an object to obtain other information. According to scientists, this will mean that Minkowski space is not three-dimensional, but four-dimensional, without the need to separate one dimension for time. One more time:
They believe that this view is better suited for the moment:
When they talk about Einstein's meaning, they partially refer to Einstein's comment, left by him in his own book on the theory of relativity.
And one more time. Let's imagine a thought experiment.
This experiment shows that time can just be a numerical order of change, not a fourth dimension. Seeing time in this way - as a way of tracking change over time - will not only solve Zeno's paradoxes about motion (Achilles and the turtle, for example), but also better describe the characteristics of the natural world.
Ilya Khel