From: Psy Kosh (psykosh@gmail.com)
Date: Sun Mar 25 2007 - 03:16:42 MDT
On 3/23/07, Robin Lee Powell <rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org> wrote:
> The whole thing with referring to time, eroneously, as the 4th
> dimension comes from certain things being easier to graph that way,
> but other than that, it's simply rubbish.
>
> -Robin
>
Well, it is a bit more than that. In relativity, it isn't clearcut
what is time and what is space. That is, what one observer measures as
a purely spacial or purely temporal interval, another observer would
measure as some combination theirof, even though they'd both agree on
the magnitude of the interval, as determined by the metric (in flat
spacetime that being the minkowski metric)
So saying it is pure rubbish is perhaps a bit much.
Talking about anything as "the" fourth dimension is questionable. But
saying that spacetime is four dimensional, and that one can't really
meaningfully seperate the space and time dimensions unambiguously is a
whole other thing.
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