Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Flatlanders in a World of Time

The video "Imagining the Tenth Dimension" does a great job of making an otherwise strictly idea-based explanation into a very visual and therefore, more feasible clarification of the theorized ten dimensions we supposedly live in according to Rob Brayanton. It made it easier for me to comprehend why time is a dimension that is so difficult to perceive physically (/beyond experience or thought).
The comparison to the mobius strip shows how we could be walking, as three-dimensional beings, along a curved dimension of time but it would feel like we are walking in a straight line. This is because we are three-dimensional beings who logically are only capable of perceiving and comprehending (fully, at least), the corresponding three dimensions-
length, width, depth. We can, however, exist within more extraneous dimensions if our perceptions of them are based upon the existence and functions of our basic three dimensions. Since time as seen as change/duration, then the curves of time could be the environment in which we exist- everchanging and eternal- and we would perceive it to be flat. In this sense, we would be flatlanders living in time. Furthermore, perhaps time exists within other dimensions, being perceived relative to its capabilities. Who's to say that time does not have cognitive capabilities similar to our own? Perhaps since it is the fourth dimension, it can exist within itself and the fifth dimension (yet again perceiving the fifth dimension related to its four). This process could continue not only to the ten dimensions mentioned in the video, but infinitely. In that case, everything would either be infinite/recurrent or-more realistically-contained within dimension upon dimension upon dimension which would eventually end where it began.

No comments: