As someone with an engineering degree, I do have some level of science education. You can tell the education level of a person from a comment? That is impressive, can you tell which university they went to also. This should be interesting... Yes, I have heard of the arrow of time and no, the arrow of time is not a dimension. I think you mean that 3 spatial dimension and 1 time dimension make up our 4 dimensional space time continuum Fractionally zero??? I think the poster you are refering to is a clown. So you feel strongly both ways, nice. I think what you are saying is that you do not have a clue what you are talking about. Probably just a confused and frustrated sockpuppet of a banned member. Not worth the effort. Have fun for the short period of time before your inevitable ban.
Again you show your inability of science knowledge, practically calling Max Planck a clown. Did you not know that a Planck length was fractionally zero? Perhaps you have not heard of Max Planck the same as you didn't know what chronological position on a timeline was. I would stick to engineering if I was you before you make further examples of your poor knowledge. I will await a more knowledgeable member to continue the discussion. I wish you good day.
John, I am not convinced that your scorn is well-placed. I also cannot parse the expression "fractionally zero". Please explain. Neither am I convinced that the "arrow of time" is a dimension of anything other than a vector space......as in the childish view that vectors are arrows in a certain direction of a certain length. In which case we may choose arrows x, y, z, t as basis vectors. Even here you will encounter difficulties - x, y, and z describe spatial vectors, whereas t does not. The usual solution is to use ct, which brings all basis vectors into register. This is generally regarded as satisfactory, except it no longer refers to "the arrow of time"
I can not believe I seemingly have got to explain everything. Fractionally zero is a fraction of the time we are discussing i.e a very small percentage of one second. Fractionally zero is the smallest amount of measurement we can perceive past the value of 0.
Once again, John, your arrogance is misplaced. If you use non-standard terminology (and "fractionally zero" certainly is that), in science and mathematics you are under an obligation to define what you mean at the outset. So you mean by that strange expression an arbitrarily small Real Number greater than zero? Is this what you mean? Ya know, in mathematics there are many instances where one makes use of such a concept, so why make up a new expression for it? Oh and by the way. You have yet to respond to my comment about the "arrow of time" and dimension. Maybe you did not understand it?
What else do you think I meant if not that? The expression has been around for some time, I am surprised you have not heard of this, for example we explain a Planck length as being fractionally zero . Maybe you do not understand that space-time is a single interwoven manifold of four dimensions of xyzt, I suggest you look this up before you further comment .
John, I can assure you that I know a great deal of topology and manifold theory. I confess the concept of an "interwoven manifold" of any dimension is new to me. Please explain Moreover, your suggested dimensions of the (Einstein) 4-manifold as x, y, z, t do not work in calculations -I suggest you try \(x=x^1, y=x^2, z =x^3, ct=x^4\) and their differentials to find the invariant line element
Einstein uses Minkowski space time , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minkowski_space in his calculations. ''In mathematical physics, Minkowski space or Minkowski spacetime is a combination of 3-dimensionalEuclidean space and time into a 4-dimensional manifold'' The manifold is not Einsteins, the calculations are, so I believe. I have provided you with a link to space-time so you can understand this. Anyway this thread seems to be drifting away from the subject question, so if you don't mind , I have not got the time to give Physics lessons. To continue I wish to discuss a statement of the poster , a statement the poster claims to be a logical argument that gives a deductive proof. In their example they have used a variation of the twin paradox . I am personally struggling to view that to be an incorrect statement! What are your views on the statement?
Basically you are talking about dimensional analysis based Plank's time and length. Plank's time is time taken by light at c to travel a distance equal to Plank's length. Now speed of light in vacuum in all inertial frames is c, so this time is independent of frames, now please tell me where is time dilation here? You are right that theoretically (rather it is assumed/hypothesized without evidence) that the smallest quantum of time and length is Plank's time and Plank's length. So obviously you cannot have a state between Lp to 2 LP and Tp to 2Tp, still time dilation does not come into picture.
John.P: This all sounds quite post-modern to me. Time dilation is a physical effect that occurs whenever we change our frame of reference. It isn't an "ideology". An ideology is a kind of political assumption that people make about what is supposed to count as "the norm" against which other things are to be measured. Similarly, when I see a word like "construct" in a context like the above, I also think post-modernism. How is measurement a "construct"? Can you explain what you mean by that?
I am sure you must have constructed mathematical models in your lifetime, construct means to build, I am sure you already know this though.
You tell me! quite clearly the poster is onto something, I think I am going to PM the poster and personally mentor them if they will accept my offer.
And would strongly advise the poster to decline the offer from a soi disant physicist whose knowledge of mathematics appears to be "fractionally zero"
I was a Math physics major. but took a lot of courses in other disciplines. In a philosophy course, there was a long chapter about time, which seemed to me to explain very little about it. I asked my father (an engineer/mathematician) what he thought. He told me that he remembered that Einstein wrote something which impressed him. I checked out library (this was an era prior to the internet) I found the following by Einstein. This is approximately what Einstein wrote, which I think is very succinct and pretty much describes it. After comparing the following with the Philosophy text chapter, I ceased feeling like a dunce in philosophy due to not learning much (if anything) from the text book.. When an individual ponders his experiences, he can order the events in his life using the criteria of before and after. He can assign a number to each event in such a way that events assigned a lower number occurred before events assigned a higher number. It is convenient to use a device called a clock to provide a consistent set of numbers for use in ordering events. In describing the laws of physics using the language of mathematics, it is convenient (if not necessary) to use a continuous variable called time. This variable similarly orders events based on the criteria of before and after. There is little (if anything) more that can be said relating to time. It is interesting that Albert used bold or italics for before & after, implying that they were undefined terms, not definable via the use of simpler terms or concepts. Note that an axiomatic system requires some undefined primitive terms to avoid various logical problems associated with circular definitions. It is interesting that Albert did not mention the concept of the flow of time from past through the present into the future, which does seem to be a construct (illusion?) of the human mind rather than an objective process associated with reality. When I showed the above to my philosophy professor, he said he would include the above in future lectures, provide it in a pamphlet, & tell students to ignore the chapter in the text book.
That is an interesting statement, when an individual ponders their experience of time, one can certainly conclude that moving forward in time is directly proportional to the history of time ''created''. There is no before and after, there is only the prior statement.
