Time as a Physical Entity

TruthSeeker

TruthSeeker

Fancy Virtual Reality Monkey
Valued Senior Member
Since time is said to be the fourth dimension, I wonder how would time "look" like from the perspective of an outsider observing our whole universe....

Would an outsider be able to see the whole history of the universe?

Also, let's say we are outside our galaxy. Is the whole galaxy in the "present" only for us, or for the whole galaxy? Or we are seeing stars at different times?
 
In answer to your first question: yes, they would theoreticaly be able to see the whole history, and future of our universe. (this is of course assuming they are capable of comprehending four or more dimensions) it would look like a Tesseract to them (basically a 4D cube.)
Of course, this is pretty much hypothetical (one has trouble actualy testing such theories :p)

Anyway, for the next question:
Well, here we get into some Relativity. Assuming we aren't moving relative to the other galaxy and we are 1 billion light years away:
Since light takes time to reach us, we will see the galaxy as it was 1 billion years ago.
Thus, something that a third observer said happened simultaniously (let's say he is halfway between us and the galaxy) in both places, would appear to have happened in that galaxy way after it happened where we were. So basicaly, for us the 'presant' of that galaxy is quite different from the 'present' in that galaxy of another observer.

-Andrew
 
Hrm i dont know how to look at this question since its theoreticly not possible to be outside the universe.
 
andbna said:
In answer to your first question: yes, they would theoreticaly be able to see the whole history, and future of our universe. (this is of course assuming they are capable of comprehending four or more dimensions) it would look like a Tesseract to them (basically a 4D cube.)
Of course, this is pretty much hypothetical (one has trouble actualy testing such theories)

Anyway, for the next question:
Well, here we get into some Relativity. Assuming we aren't moving relative to the other galaxy and we are 1 billion light years away:
Since light takes time to reach us, we will see the galaxy as it was 1 billion years ago.
Thus, something that a third observer said happened simultaniously (let's say he is halfway between us and the galaxy) in both places, would appear to have happened in that galaxy way after it happened where we were. So basicaly, for us the 'presant' of that galaxy is quite different from the 'present' in that galaxy of another observer.

-Andrew
Click to expand...
Thank you for your answer.

:confused:

Yikes...:p :m:
 
Hello again andba,
How can a cube, or tesseract, be a 4D object? In fact any cube is a 4D object if it exists. (infact it is a 5D object, but I will leave that alone-haha).
Can you, or anyone else think of a place where time is equadistant from everything? I promise this is not a trick question. It just seems to me that, if you believe in God, we were meant to be able to communicate and meet beings from great distances if they exist. Otherwise we should be able to expand to fill our universe with our life. These are the two theories about existance of sentient life. We may be alone to expand or we have to make contact.
Personally I believe we are alone and the problems of time/distance/relativity is something either in future evolutionary generations to solve as we expand or, something that will enable us to reach far far distances much more easily than we can now conceive. Whbat's your pleasure?
 
Ah hi DJA
A tesseract is a 4D object, just like a line is 1D, as square is 2D and a cube is 3D. This is geometry, a branch of mathmatics so it's theoretical, the actual existance of such an object was not in debate. A tesseract is to a cube as a cube is to a square and as a square is to a line segment.
I think what you mean is that if I am holding some cube, then due to time, it is 4 dimensional correct? In which case that's the point, if we represent our universe as a giant cube (it would be a sphear I guess actualy, but bear with me) then a being outside would be uneffected by time (because outside of our universe would be outside of time) and thus be able to percieve the time dimension allong with the 3 spatial dimension and so see a tesseract rather than the cube we percieve we are in, sort of like: "What would god see our universe as?"

Now im not sure what you mean by time is equidistant, since that would imply time itself has a spatial dimension? o_O
If by that you mean it passes at the same rate, than by Relativity, I say it is in any 2 reference frames which have no velocity relative to each other, however they would not necissarily see 2 events unfold in the same order. Thus, time is indeed relative (though causality still holds.) So yah, bit confusing.

-Andrew
 
Hrm i dont know how to look at this question since its theoreticly not possible to be outside the universe.
Click to expand...

Not that we know of anyway. We are such an infantile race, relatively speaking. We've only just begin to explore the universe.
 
Zorlac said:
Not that we know of anyway. We are such an infantile race, relatively speaking. We've only just begin to explore the universe.
Click to expand...

No, its a matter of definition. The universe is all there is, so anyone "outside" the universe is still part of the universe and therefor not outside of the universe. Still follow ? lol :p
 
Hmm you can also think of a tesseract as a 5-D concept when it is moving. This comes from the idea proposed by Einstein that space-time can warp. When you warp a 2D suface you get a 3rd dimensions, when you warp a 3d suface you get a 4d surface, then add the dimension of time and it is five dimensional. As your question goes from looking out side of our galaxy : time moves slower for every large body , so in our galaxy time is slower or even faster that other galxies so the motion of time is different for each body. So in a sense time is a side affect of matter so your answer is yes :)
 
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