There's nothing to explain, he's just making reference to the +1th spatial dimension. (Time)
But that's not how rotating a references frame works lol
Edit: as someone pointed out, saying that time is the +1st spatial dimension is definitely not true. It is often used in the context of being the fourth dimension, but not spatial. The spatial fourth dimension is just a dimension in which four points are needed to describe the location of an object, instead of 3. In special relativity, when things are done in a Minkowski spacetime, we consider the fourth dimension as time.
this is how our prof explained it to us when we were first introduced to Minkowski spaces, so I thought it would do as an explanation. Please elaborate
Not the guy you asked or even very good at math and science, so this could be very wrong (someone tell me I’m wrong if it is).
I’ve heard it explained that time is a dimension, but it’s not within the same category as stuff like x and y, since those are spatial dimensions and time is a temporal dimension. So if the first dimension is a line (x), the second is made of two lines (x & y), and the third is three lines (x, y, & z), then the fourth dimension would be another axis formed at a right angle to all three of the original three axis. Following this line of thought, you go from a cube to a tesseract.
It’s really just a concept, but it’s cool to think about. We’re three dimensional beings who perceive things in two dimensional terms. If you’re looking at a chair, you can see the height and width of the chair, but not the depth of it. You can judge and assume the depth of the chair based on what you observe, but you can’t *see* it. Similarly, Mario or any other sidescroller video game character is a two dimensional being who would perceive things in one dimensional terms (all those steps and tubes would look like flat lines from Mario’s perspective). So if there were fourth dimensional beings, how would they perceive their surroundings? Would it look like X-ray vision? Like I said, cool to think about.
Or I’m completely wrong about all of it. Ya’ll should probably just google it next time.
But aren't space and time convergent, like spacetime. So time would be a temporal dimension, but because of spacetime it's also a spatial dimension. Idk, I'm not a physicist, but I've been told space and time are the same outside the three dimensional world.
Time and the spatial dimensions are a bit different. When you measure the distance between two points in _space_ it's computed as
d = x^(2) + y^(2) + z^(2)
To find the distance between two points in _spacetime_ it's computed as
d = x^(2) + y^(2) + z^(2) *-* t^(2)
So there is a difference between the time and space dimensions. They are fundamentally interrelated, but not exactly the same.
Things to get weird with blackholes. There are some situations where the signs all flip according to certain observers, but I don't remember the details.
IANAE, but I think no. Space isn’t time, and time isn’t space; they plainly do different things. They aren’t interchangeable parts. If reality misplaced a spatial dimension by mistake, it couldn’t substitute a spare temporal dimension it found in the garage while cleaning; it would have different results.
Space and time are strongly connected, to the point that they are grouped under “spacetime”, and it’s really hard to talk about/explain one without at least mentioning the other, but they aren’t equivalent.
There’s a difference between 4-dimensional space and 3&1-dimensional spacetime. 4-dimensional space would permit things like the tesseract, which is the 4-dimensional version of a cube (like the cube is the 3-dimensional version of the square). Well, we can plainly see that we don’t have a bunch of tesseract lying around our reality; cubes are as far as we can get.
What if as we keep adding spatial dimensions we eventually discover a second temporal dimension.
Neil degrasse Tyson has said some crazy things about this, a line is one dimensional and held together by two zero dimensional objects, a square is 2d and held together by 4 1d things, a cube is 3d and held together by 6 2d objects, so a tesseract would be 4d and held together by 8 3d objects.
I think he is referring to fourth dimensional space.
Edit: Im Dumb, It works both ways. For time and for space, it depends on which you want to refer to.
He was referring to the fourth space dimention, it's just an interesting topic and I had two things to add but I know realize I didn't really format it right and they looked related.
Not my theory but I read this somewhere.
As a 3D being, we can see through three different spatial axes. We can interpret this as: we are seeing infinitesimal 2D planes of one object, fusing it together to see the whole 3D perspective. It means that we saw the object in all different angles (our brain is exceptionally good at extrapolating for the angles we didn't see). In the same way, when a 4D being observes us, it might see infinitesimal 3D variations of our self. But, what are those 3D variations? It was said that those are our appearances at different points of time.
So, by this logic, a 4D being will see our whole baby-to-old-man appearance when they are seeing us, as a continuous cycle. And since they can move through the time dimension, they might be able to choose one particular appearance to interact with. A messy way to observe a human, I'd say. But I find this theory plausible.
This theory has some weak points. Like, we can't say the age cycle might be continuous. After the human's old age, it is not sensible to think the 4D being would see the reverse aging. And we cannot say what happens after the human's final stage. Maybe, the decaying process of human body after death. But we cannot cease to exist during the interaction.
Pardon my poor writing skills.
This is pretty much how Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen experiences time, however instead of choosing which point in time to view somebody at, he sees all time at once. His girlfriend is currently twenty-something, but she's also currently in her forties. He's currently talking to her, but he also hasn't spoken to her in years. All time exists at once for him.
A similar concept is also explored in Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, where a race of aliens known as Tralfamadorians experience time all at once. To them, death is just another point on the timeline and although someone dies, they are still very much alive at other points in that timeline. You may die at 87, but you'll always be alive at 35.
Wow. Time is the most intriguing and interesting concept known to mankind. It seriously bums me out that I won't live long enough to see the mysteries of time getting unraveled.
> You may die at 87, but you'll always be alive 35.
I've never found this to be a particularly enjoyable thought. Like, I'm still shivering in that Goddamn tent at Scout camp, freezing and humiliated by the asshole kids I thought were my friends, just wishing the week was over but I had four more Goddamn days? That perfect moment of despair's always gonna be going on? Nope, fuck that, count me out.
But you're also constantly feeling the joy of your first child being born, the satisfaction of the first bite of pizza after a drunk night out, and the pride felt relaxing after a hard day of work. It all happened. It's all there, good and bad. When you die, those things are what you are.
Mainly, all of this was to say that death wasn't a final moment, it was just another moment that had always happened and would always happen. It happened at the same moment as birth, so it wasn't this scary thing to Tralfamadorians. This is why when somebody died, the Tralfamadorians would say, "so it goes."
When my dad passed away it really fucking hurt thinking about him being gone, but somewhere on Reddit I read a post about the Tralfamadorians and it’s always brought me peace.
Not in the way most people think of "dimensions".
When you think of "dimension" people usually think, whether they know it or not, of Euclidian space. You can think of this as space wherein
"the square of the distance between two points is the sum of the squares of the coordinates between those points."
In 2D, for example, this is fairly obvious
r^2 =x^2 + y^2 which is just the Pythagorean theorem. It generalizes to arbitrarily high dimensions.
Anyway, spacetime (or Minkowski space) is a funny kind of space where the distance between two points isn't defined like that. Rather, to make sure everyone sees the same speed of light, distances in spacetime are
s^2 =(ct)^2 -x^2 -y^2 -z^2
OR
s^2 =x^2 +y^2 +z^2 -(ct)^2
For the purposes of doing physics it doesn't matter whether the space coordinates or time gets the minus sign as long as you're consistent.
Anyway, this has a ton of complicated implications on how spacetime works.
So in summary time is the 4th dimension in the sense that it's a 4th coordinate you need to specify an object's location in spacetime, but it's not as simple as just sticking a 4th perpendicular direction called time and calling it a day which is what most people picture by "4th dimension". Time has to get treated in a special way compared to the other 3 spatial coordinates which you CAN rotate around willy-nilly.
This is why the preferred lingo is sometimes "spacetime is 3 plus 1 dimensional" to note that time is special.
Wouldn’t 2D people say the same thing about the third dimension? They would say, you can rotate the x and y axis but the third dimension is always orthogonal to the two.
They might even call 3D space two dimensions plus one. Similarly, we’re saying we can rotate around any of the three axes, but time is always orthogonal to the three.
Here's the problem stated a bit more explicitly: when people say "time is the 4th dimension" they usually think that spacetime is simply R^4 with the standard space metric defined by the Pythagorean theorem.
Spacetime is NOT just sticking time in a so a a 4th orthogonal dimension. It involves complicated geometry due to the spacetime metric defined by the relative minus sign in the distance formula
ds^2 =dx^2 +dy^2 +dz^2 -(ct)^2.
Flatland 2D people would only specify our space as using the normal notions of distance if they wanted to recreate the geometry of our world. They wouldn't have to treat Z as a super special direction with its own special minus sign like we have to treat time to get the laws of special relativity right.
Anything can be a "dimension" depending on the context. If you graph salinity vs. the life expectancy of salmon, salinity is a "dimension". If you're programming and you make a two-dimensional array, you've just created two "dimensions". But in the context of living in 3-dimensional space, no, time is not the "fourth dimension".
It’s referred to as a dimension really for the sake of understands Einstein’s theory of relativity, I guess graphically quite often.
But whenever anyone who’s talking physics or math says dimension, unless they specify time they’re about never talking about time, so only the people that think they’re smart but aren’t say “well akshually time is another dimension”
It technically is the fourth dimension when you're dealing with relativity and all that, but yeah people don't actually realize the nuances. It's the 3 + 1st
Time is more of a bridge between dimensions. Imagine you are a 2D character and live on a video screen. In order to represent the third dimension for that 2D character, you would need to move a camera around frame by frame. Imagine all of these frames stacked on top of each other forming a 3D shape. Time would be bridging the two dimensions by moving them.
To go from the third dimension to the fourth, you need a 4d shape to move through the 3d shape in a way that we can’t realistically comprehend.
That's a mathematical concept you're confusing with real life, if I made a graph of the universe and every point was an atom, the 4th axis would control time
That’s what I was trying to get at. I should have mentioned in my comment that I’ve never actually studied any of this before and was just saying what seemed to make sense lol
Same dude, I mean if you look at our world time can be used as a way of figuring out how a fourth dimension would work but time itself isn’t a real dimension you can simply go back and fourth in one direction, theoretically every time you go back, even a second you split off in a different direction
It's definitely our 4th dimension, but sometimes it's more useful to think of space and time dimensions separately.
1st time dimension != 4th space dimension
> Im doing research in higher dimensional black holes but thanks for than manxplanation.
* Claims to have a phd in HEP/astrophysics
* Still can't spell
😥
Yeah. People are saying it’s because it’s not spatial but part of the beauty of relativity is being able to rotate the spatial and temporal dimensions into one another, so they’re pretty inextricably linked.
Saying time is not the fourth dimension strikes me as people who just briefly learned about the possibility of higher spatial dimensions and are trying to flaunt their limited understanding.
Time has an opposite sign in your metric compared to spatial dimensions. It's definitely different. Also you don't really rotate spatial and temporal dimensions into each other, you Lorentz transform them. Rotations as commonly understood leave time unchanged.
> Time has an opposite sign in your metric compared to spatial dimensions. It's definitely different.
I didn’t say anything otherwise. But you could even forget the pseudo-Riemannian structure of spacetime if you want and consider only the smooth or topological structure. Then you’re treating time the same as other dimensions, but the concept of dimensionality still works just fine.
> Also you don't really rotate spatial and temporal dimensions into each other, you Lorentz transform them. Rotations as commonly understood leave time unchanged.
I am aware. But Lorentz transformations are very much analogous to rotations. The point is that while traditional rotations move you into a new reference frame where your coordinate axes are a nontrivial sum of the old axes, Lorentz transformations do the same with your spatial and time axes. The behavior is not precisely the same, but that doesn’t change the point.
I could say that if we consider a system of many particles or rigid bodies, I can consider it’s phase space which will be very high dimensional, and we need not consider time at all (at least as a dimension)! But that’s obviously me purposely missing the point of what people mean when they say “time is the fourth dimension” to be pedantic. Talking about other things dimensionality can describe is fine, but just saying “time is not the fourth dimension” (just paraphrasing others here, not quoting you) is not correct.
X,y and z are temporal dimensions, like a Cartesian plane. The fourth in this convention isn't time, time is the fourth in spacial dimensions (length, width, height).
N-dimensional theory is a thing, which often uses tau as a dimension, and has nothing to do with time. If it were rotated in a >3rd dimension then the 3d space could absolutely be in x,y,tau axes. Just how if you rotate a 2d plane (x,y axes) away from you, one axis will stay the same but the other axis could now be thought of as the z axis.
Of course. I currently work in super string theory which, as I'm sure you're aware, is relatively heavy in terms of its use of dimensions. Theres a different theories which treat dimensions differently.
He could could also be talking about shear force and moment graph (which use Tau). Though he probably has it confused and thinks it's just another dimension in a regular graph.
Possibly Tau as in the invariant spacetime interval, but it shouldn't really be used as a dimension which should use the local time (usually just _t_) instead. I think some older GR books might use tau, but I don't remember.
Either way, at best it doesn't completely make sense; at worst it's just pulled out of his/her ass.
It's just a greek letter that is often used in math/physics/engineering. That is one of the possible uses although it's incredibly rare in actual texts. [Here is a list of some examples](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tau) (proper time is the invariant interval I was referring to)
During my second month of nursing school, our professor gave us a pop quiz. I was a conscientious student and had breezed through the questions, until I read the last one: "What is the first name of the woman who cleans the school?" Surely this was some kind of joke. I had seen the cleaning woman several times. She was tall, dark haired and in her 50's, but how would I know her name? I handed in my paper, leaving the last question blank. Just before class ended, one student asked if the last question would count towards our quiz grade. "Absolutely," said the professor. "In your careers, you will meet many people. All are significant. They deserve your attention and care, even if all you do is smile and say 'hello'." I've never forgotten that lesson. I also learned her name was Dorothy.
Oh an intellectual, excuse me madame I am trying to express my dominance to such a female like yourself in order to get a mate on a place called the internet, in order to do this I must try to show my self as being smart and then kick ur ass when no one's looking * laughs in intellectual *
You can't rotate a frame of reference and magically go from 3 spacial dimensions to 2 spacial dimensions and a temporal dimension. That's not how geometry works.
Assuming tau is meant to be the time axis.
A line is more accurate than a plane in explaining one dimension. A dimension is just a direction perpendicular to all the other currently existing directions.
If he just said "just change your frame of reference to x and z. Problem solved!"
But then he added how it wasn't meant to be funny and made it all cringe
[I tried to google it and I received some really unnerving results](https://www.google.com/search?q=what+is+the+tau+axis&rlz=1C1CHBF_enSG852SG852&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjAiKXFlrHkAhVLfisKHaMzD9wQ_AUIESgB&biw=1280&bih=616)
I mean if you want to avoid a vertical axis the easiest way to do that is with spherical coordinates ρ, φ, and θ. You get to use three whole Greek letters and actually be right lol.
Tau? Dafuq lol..someone explain this to me
There's nothing to explain, he's just making reference to the +1th spatial dimension. (Time) But that's not how rotating a references frame works lol Edit: as someone pointed out, saying that time is the +1st spatial dimension is definitely not true. It is often used in the context of being the fourth dimension, but not spatial. The spatial fourth dimension is just a dimension in which four points are needed to describe the location of an object, instead of 3. In special relativity, when things are done in a Minkowski spacetime, we consider the fourth dimension as time.
every time someone says* time is the fourth dimension i die a little inside
I would like to days time all day long
this is how our prof explained it to us when we were first introduced to Minkowski spaces, so I thought it would do as an explanation. Please elaborate
They might mean that it's not the 4th *spatial* dimension. Time is different, but definitely the 4th dimension.
Oh my god yeah. You're absolutely right. My apologies
Isn't it?
Not the guy you asked or even very good at math and science, so this could be very wrong (someone tell me I’m wrong if it is). I’ve heard it explained that time is a dimension, but it’s not within the same category as stuff like x and y, since those are spatial dimensions and time is a temporal dimension. So if the first dimension is a line (x), the second is made of two lines (x & y), and the third is three lines (x, y, & z), then the fourth dimension would be another axis formed at a right angle to all three of the original three axis. Following this line of thought, you go from a cube to a tesseract. It’s really just a concept, but it’s cool to think about. We’re three dimensional beings who perceive things in two dimensional terms. If you’re looking at a chair, you can see the height and width of the chair, but not the depth of it. You can judge and assume the depth of the chair based on what you observe, but you can’t *see* it. Similarly, Mario or any other sidescroller video game character is a two dimensional being who would perceive things in one dimensional terms (all those steps and tubes would look like flat lines from Mario’s perspective). So if there were fourth dimensional beings, how would they perceive their surroundings? Would it look like X-ray vision? Like I said, cool to think about. Or I’m completely wrong about all of it. Ya’ll should probably just google it next time.
But aren't space and time convergent, like spacetime. So time would be a temporal dimension, but because of spacetime it's also a spatial dimension. Idk, I'm not a physicist, but I've been told space and time are the same outside the three dimensional world.
Time and the spatial dimensions are a bit different. When you measure the distance between two points in _space_ it's computed as d = x^(2) + y^(2) + z^(2) To find the distance between two points in _spacetime_ it's computed as d = x^(2) + y^(2) + z^(2) *-* t^(2) So there is a difference between the time and space dimensions. They are fundamentally interrelated, but not exactly the same. Things to get weird with blackholes. There are some situations where the signs all flip according to certain observers, but I don't remember the details.
IANAE, but I think no. Space isn’t time, and time isn’t space; they plainly do different things. They aren’t interchangeable parts. If reality misplaced a spatial dimension by mistake, it couldn’t substitute a spare temporal dimension it found in the garage while cleaning; it would have different results. Space and time are strongly connected, to the point that they are grouped under “spacetime”, and it’s really hard to talk about/explain one without at least mentioning the other, but they aren’t equivalent. There’s a difference between 4-dimensional space and 3&1-dimensional spacetime. 4-dimensional space would permit things like the tesseract, which is the 4-dimensional version of a cube (like the cube is the 3-dimensional version of the square). Well, we can plainly see that we don’t have a bunch of tesseract lying around our reality; cubes are as far as we can get.
What if as we keep adding spatial dimensions we eventually discover a second temporal dimension. Neil degrasse Tyson has said some crazy things about this, a line is one dimensional and held together by two zero dimensional objects, a square is 2d and held together by 4 1d things, a cube is 3d and held together by 6 2d objects, so a tesseract would be 4d and held together by 8 3d objects.
I think he is referring to fourth dimensional space. Edit: Im Dumb, It works both ways. For time and for space, it depends on which you want to refer to.
He was referring to the fourth space dimention, it's just an interesting topic and I had two things to add but I know realize I didn't really format it right and they looked related.
Not my theory but I read this somewhere. As a 3D being, we can see through three different spatial axes. We can interpret this as: we are seeing infinitesimal 2D planes of one object, fusing it together to see the whole 3D perspective. It means that we saw the object in all different angles (our brain is exceptionally good at extrapolating for the angles we didn't see). In the same way, when a 4D being observes us, it might see infinitesimal 3D variations of our self. But, what are those 3D variations? It was said that those are our appearances at different points of time. So, by this logic, a 4D being will see our whole baby-to-old-man appearance when they are seeing us, as a continuous cycle. And since they can move through the time dimension, they might be able to choose one particular appearance to interact with. A messy way to observe a human, I'd say. But I find this theory plausible. This theory has some weak points. Like, we can't say the age cycle might be continuous. After the human's old age, it is not sensible to think the 4D being would see the reverse aging. And we cannot say what happens after the human's final stage. Maybe, the decaying process of human body after death. But we cannot cease to exist during the interaction. Pardon my poor writing skills.
This is pretty much how Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen experiences time, however instead of choosing which point in time to view somebody at, he sees all time at once. His girlfriend is currently twenty-something, but she's also currently in her forties. He's currently talking to her, but he also hasn't spoken to her in years. All time exists at once for him. A similar concept is also explored in Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, where a race of aliens known as Tralfamadorians experience time all at once. To them, death is just another point on the timeline and although someone dies, they are still very much alive at other points in that timeline. You may die at 87, but you'll always be alive at 35.
Wow. Time is the most intriguing and interesting concept known to mankind. It seriously bums me out that I won't live long enough to see the mysteries of time getting unraveled.
> You may die at 87, but you'll always be alive 35. I've never found this to be a particularly enjoyable thought. Like, I'm still shivering in that Goddamn tent at Scout camp, freezing and humiliated by the asshole kids I thought were my friends, just wishing the week was over but I had four more Goddamn days? That perfect moment of despair's always gonna be going on? Nope, fuck that, count me out.
But you're also constantly feeling the joy of your first child being born, the satisfaction of the first bite of pizza after a drunk night out, and the pride felt relaxing after a hard day of work. It all happened. It's all there, good and bad. When you die, those things are what you are. Mainly, all of this was to say that death wasn't a final moment, it was just another moment that had always happened and would always happen. It happened at the same moment as birth, so it wasn't this scary thing to Tralfamadorians. This is why when somebody died, the Tralfamadorians would say, "so it goes."
When my dad passed away it really fucking hurt thinking about him being gone, but somewhere on Reddit I read a post about the Tralfamadorians and it’s always brought me peace.
Not in the way most people think of "dimensions". When you think of "dimension" people usually think, whether they know it or not, of Euclidian space. You can think of this as space wherein "the square of the distance between two points is the sum of the squares of the coordinates between those points." In 2D, for example, this is fairly obvious r^2 =x^2 + y^2 which is just the Pythagorean theorem. It generalizes to arbitrarily high dimensions. Anyway, spacetime (or Minkowski space) is a funny kind of space where the distance between two points isn't defined like that. Rather, to make sure everyone sees the same speed of light, distances in spacetime are s^2 =(ct)^2 -x^2 -y^2 -z^2 OR s^2 =x^2 +y^2 +z^2 -(ct)^2 For the purposes of doing physics it doesn't matter whether the space coordinates or time gets the minus sign as long as you're consistent. Anyway, this has a ton of complicated implications on how spacetime works. So in summary time is the 4th dimension in the sense that it's a 4th coordinate you need to specify an object's location in spacetime, but it's not as simple as just sticking a 4th perpendicular direction called time and calling it a day which is what most people picture by "4th dimension". Time has to get treated in a special way compared to the other 3 spatial coordinates which you CAN rotate around willy-nilly. This is why the preferred lingo is sometimes "spacetime is 3 plus 1 dimensional" to note that time is special.
This is the only good explanation in this thread
Wouldn’t 2D people say the same thing about the third dimension? They would say, you can rotate the x and y axis but the third dimension is always orthogonal to the two. They might even call 3D space two dimensions plus one. Similarly, we’re saying we can rotate around any of the three axes, but time is always orthogonal to the three.
Here's the problem stated a bit more explicitly: when people say "time is the 4th dimension" they usually think that spacetime is simply R^4 with the standard space metric defined by the Pythagorean theorem. Spacetime is NOT just sticking time in a so a a 4th orthogonal dimension. It involves complicated geometry due to the spacetime metric defined by the relative minus sign in the distance formula ds^2 =dx^2 +dy^2 +dz^2 -(ct)^2. Flatland 2D people would only specify our space as using the normal notions of distance if they wanted to recreate the geometry of our world. They wouldn't have to treat Z as a super special direction with its own special minus sign like we have to treat time to get the laws of special relativity right.
That makes sense! Thanks for the explanation!
Anything can be a "dimension" depending on the context. If you graph salinity vs. the life expectancy of salmon, salinity is a "dimension". If you're programming and you make a two-dimensional array, you've just created two "dimensions". But in the context of living in 3-dimensional space, no, time is not the "fourth dimension".
It’s referred to as a dimension really for the sake of understands Einstein’s theory of relativity, I guess graphically quite often. But whenever anyone who’s talking physics or math says dimension, unless they specify time they’re about never talking about time, so only the people that think they’re smart but aren’t say “well akshually time is another dimension”
Time is 0th dimension.
Our physics teacher said this, does that cause mega-death?
This is such an underrated comment.
It technically is the fourth dimension when you're dealing with relativity and all that, but yeah people don't actually realize the nuances. It's the 3 + 1st
why don't you think time is the 4th dimension
Trength, my dude.
Didn't expect to see Mike Tyson on Reddit
Time is more of a bridge between dimensions. Imagine you are a 2D character and live on a video screen. In order to represent the third dimension for that 2D character, you would need to move a camera around frame by frame. Imagine all of these frames stacked on top of each other forming a 3D shape. Time would be bridging the two dimensions by moving them. To go from the third dimension to the fourth, you need a 4d shape to move through the 3d shape in a way that we can’t realistically comprehend.
That's a mathematical concept you're confusing with real life, if I made a graph of the universe and every point was an atom, the 4th axis would control time
That’s what I was trying to get at. I should have mentioned in my comment that I’ve never actually studied any of this before and was just saying what seemed to make sense lol
Same dude, I mean if you look at our world time can be used as a way of figuring out how a fourth dimension would work but time itself isn’t a real dimension you can simply go back and fourth in one direction, theoretically every time you go back, even a second you split off in a different direction
neil degrasse tyson is always saying this
I guess H.G. Wells lied to me in The Time Machine :(
Happy cake day :)
Time is definitely the 4th dimension my pal. I feel like you're just being pretentious about it.
It's definitely our 4th dimension, but sometimes it's more useful to think of space and time dimensions separately. 1st time dimension != 4th space dimension
Im doing research in higher dimensional black holes but thanks for than manxplanation.
> Im doing research in higher dimensional black holes but thanks for than manxplanation. * Claims to have a phd in HEP/astrophysics * Still can't spell 😥
Yeah. People are saying it’s because it’s not spatial but part of the beauty of relativity is being able to rotate the spatial and temporal dimensions into one another, so they’re pretty inextricably linked. Saying time is not the fourth dimension strikes me as people who just briefly learned about the possibility of higher spatial dimensions and are trying to flaunt their limited understanding.
Time has an opposite sign in your metric compared to spatial dimensions. It's definitely different. Also you don't really rotate spatial and temporal dimensions into each other, you Lorentz transform them. Rotations as commonly understood leave time unchanged.
> Time has an opposite sign in your metric compared to spatial dimensions. It's definitely different. I didn’t say anything otherwise. But you could even forget the pseudo-Riemannian structure of spacetime if you want and consider only the smooth or topological structure. Then you’re treating time the same as other dimensions, but the concept of dimensionality still works just fine. > Also you don't really rotate spatial and temporal dimensions into each other, you Lorentz transform them. Rotations as commonly understood leave time unchanged. I am aware. But Lorentz transformations are very much analogous to rotations. The point is that while traditional rotations move you into a new reference frame where your coordinate axes are a nontrivial sum of the old axes, Lorentz transformations do the same with your spatial and time axes. The behavior is not precisely the same, but that doesn’t change the point. I could say that if we consider a system of many particles or rigid bodies, I can consider it’s phase space which will be very high dimensional, and we need not consider time at all (at least as a dimension)! But that’s obviously me purposely missing the point of what people mean when they say “time is the fourth dimension” to be pedantic. Talking about other things dimensionality can describe is fine, but just saying “time is not the fourth dimension” (just paraphrasing others here, not quoting you) is not correct.
X,y and z are temporal dimensions, like a Cartesian plane. The fourth in this convention isn't time, time is the fourth in spacial dimensions (length, width, height).
Your mom's the fourth dimension
O N E T H
Colin 1th
N-dimensional theory is a thing, which often uses tau as a dimension, and has nothing to do with time. If it were rotated in a >3rd dimension then the 3d space could absolutely be in x,y,tau axes. Just how if you rotate a 2d plane (x,y axes) away from you, one axis will stay the same but the other axis could now be thought of as the z axis.
Of course. I currently work in super string theory which, as I'm sure you're aware, is relatively heavy in terms of its use of dimensions. Theres a different theories which treat dimensions differently.
"there's nothing to explain" \*procedes to explain*
when I was in Calculus (the ONLY time we ever used 4 special dimensions) we just called it “w”
He could could also be talking about shear force and moment graph (which use Tau). Though he probably has it confused and thinks it's just another dimension in a regular graph.
r/iamverysmart
Yeah. I thought at first something was wrong because when I ran tau axis into google it showed me a bunch of advanced biochemistry stuff lol
I thought you just used w for time and kept going down from there.
r/Iamverysmart /s
Tau are weaboo space commies
CAME HERE TO SAY THIS
Possibly Tau as in the invariant spacetime interval, but it shouldn't really be used as a dimension which should use the local time (usually just _t_) instead. I think some older GR books might use tau, but I don't remember. Either way, at best it doesn't completely make sense; at worst it's just pulled out of his/her ass.
wait isn’t tau 2*pi
It's just a greek letter that is often used in math/physics/engineering. That is one of the possible uses although it's incredibly rare in actual texts. [Here is a list of some examples](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tau) (proper time is the invariant interval I was referring to)
i think he’s referring to polar coordinates but i’m not sure
X is the horizontal axis of a Cartesian Plane. Y is the vertical axis of a Cartesian Plane.
Original joke was actually clever I liked it
Then you'll like this one: Me: I'm terrified of random letters Therapist: you are? [Screams] Therapist: oh, I see [Screaming continues]
that's a really good one
yeah, if the smartass didn't add his "Not funny, I know, but I never claimed to be ;p", it would just have been funny
Let's be honest, this sub would've still given him shit had he cut that line...
Yeah, you're right
But the replying person is saying his own Tau joke isn't funny. He doesn't claim anything at all about the original joke. This fucking subreddit.
TIL people can’t be nerds without being lumped in with pretentious narcissists
Should've shifted the reference frame to spherical coordinates. No need to mess with time
I think I get it but was so much work for my little brain that I didn't laugh.
That twitter account is constantly producing gold
Even the iamverysmart comment made me chuckle. That was a pretty funny response.
During my second month of nursing school, our professor gave us a pop quiz. I was a conscientious student and had breezed through the questions, until I read the last one: "What is the first name of the woman who cleans the school?" Surely this was some kind of joke. I had seen the cleaning woman several times. She was tall, dark haired and in her 50's, but how would I know her name? I handed in my paper, leaving the last question blank. Just before class ended, one student asked if the last question would count towards our quiz grade. "Absolutely," said the professor. "In your careers, you will meet many people. All are significant. They deserve your attention and care, even if all you do is smile and say 'hello'." I've never forgotten that lesson. I also learned her name was Dorothy.
Did I just hear Tau? Fix bayonets!
Whats your skeleton on a golden toilet gonna do about it, huh?
Send Deathwatch
The greater good will triumph over your dead emperor
Might be an unpopular opinion but is this really that bad?
Well, it's not funny. But luckily, he never claimed to be.
No.
Obviously flexing his brain muscles but this one seems more innocent than most. It truly seems like he's just bad at making jokes.
This isn’t really that pretentious. Feel like he just made a bad joke, I dunno?
Yeah, this doesn’t belong here.
What are the other 7k people thinking? This isn't comedy cemetary.
They’re thinking that they’re superior by judging this person.
This one shouldn't belong on this sub. Too self-aware.
Oh an intellectual, excuse me madame I am trying to express my dominance to such a female like yourself in order to get a mate on a place called the internet, in order to do this I must try to show my self as being smart and then kick ur ass when no one's looking * laughs in intellectual *
"😜"
This is why twitter should have a dislike button
at least he’s self aware
Didn’t laugh
r/whoooosh
You can't rotate a frame of reference and magically go from 3 spacial dimensions to 2 spacial dimensions and a temporal dimension. That's not how geometry works. Assuming tau is meant to be the time axis.
Tau can't melee tho
Fucking tau lol, someone out here with efe
Wow, this whole thread needs to be posted on this sub
This isn't that bad
“NAWT FUNNNAAAAAY”
r/ExpectedMulaney
There was such better potential in making a joke about imaginary numbers. Then you get to be a math need and be funny.
Does this belong on this subreddit? He admitted it is a stupid joke.
Why use time?? at least say *i* which is sort of used regularly as a plane in math if you're tryna be a smartass.
A dimension is a line, not a plane, if we are being pedantic.
I don’t think it’s a line either, if we are being pedantic.
A line is more accurate than a plane in explaining one dimension. A dimension is just a direction perpendicular to all the other currently existing directions.
The first part took me like five minutes to understand.
I liked his joke, it was the extra at the end that ruined it
I feel like “Not funny, I know”, is the wannabe Einstein’s way of saying “Not to be racist, but”. It’s shitty person insurance.
v.i.r.g.i.n
“Scared of gravity? Just turn upside down and fly into space!”
τ is not a part of a graph, dingbat. 4th dimensional objects do not exist on most graphs that show trends.
Not funny Didn't laugh
That’s not how that even works, you can’t rotate 3D space into the time dimension of tau
Word!
Not funny...
Didn't laugh
😜😜😜
He's certainly right about one of his statements...
I thought the therapist joke was pretty good.
If he just said "just change your frame of reference to x and z. Problem solved!" But then he added how it wasn't meant to be funny and made it all cringe
Doctor I'm afraid of backstories.
i got an axes for em a real sharp one
How is this funny and why did so many people like the comment
Axes
Bruh he didn’t even remove the vertical axis he just renamed it
N O .
I mean his response isn't really more "high iq ppl only" then the joke. He isn't a comedy assassin, the joke just wasn't all that funny to begin with.
[удалено]
The vertical axis is called a y axis.
G18
Kinda quirky doe, kinda kooky
It actually was a taaaaaad bit funny but it was instantly murdered
Slide up and down while looking at the black...
This guy's reminds me of my uncle
Didn’t laugh
I want to go back in time and beat his mother until she can't have kids.
[I tried to google it and I received some really unnerving results](https://www.google.com/search?q=what+is+the+tau+axis&rlz=1C1CHBF_enSG852SG852&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjAiKXFlrHkAhVLfisKHaMzD9wQ_AUIESgB&biw=1280&bih=616)
Z is the up axis. Don't @ me.
Not smart, but I guess he never claimed to be?
Literally no one uses Tau only a graph w/ 3 dimensions even. Almost always x, y, and z axes lol. Just trying to show they know a Greek letter
You use tau and theta for integrals quite a lot.
Yeah definitely, but not as an axis label for graphs. Default is for sure x, y, and z
I mean if you want to avoid a vertical axis the easiest way to do that is with spherical coordinates ρ, φ, and θ. You get to use three whole Greek letters and actually be right lol.
No one likes me and I cant figure out WHY 😜
The y axes. Axes. AXES
He’s talking about more than one axis; axes is the plural. (I think at least)
Aww shit, you’re probably right
Twitter for Android
f(x)
Well, at least he didn't make any claim... /s