My friend Dave says he manipulates events captured in time every day. Dave is a video editor, among other things. He views the video on a screen with a timeline below it. He can move to any particular frame by clicking the timeline. Then he can edit out unwanted parts.
A photo, like a single frame of a movie, is a representation of a 3-D event captured on a 2-D surface in an instant of time. Movies capture images of the 3-D universe on 2-D surfaces represented on a timeline. Videos are a way to describe Time.
I have thought that Time was a dimension, one of four: length, height, depth, and time. Given a precise moment in time any point in the physical universe can be mapped by its coordinates in relation to lines designated x-axis, y-axis, and z-axis. Length is a line we express as parallel to an x-axis. Height, similarly, is a line parallel to a y-axis. Depth may be expressed as a line parallel to a z-axis, where the axes x, y, and z are perpendicular to one another and intersecting in a common point. The intersection creates three planes, plane xy, plane yz, and plane xz. Any 3-D figure touches each of these three planes. However, can Time be expressed by such a plane?
Can a line pass through all three planes? Yes, I think so, but I need a model to be sure.
If it could, then such a line could represent Time, and Time could be expressed as a plane such as; plane xt, or yt or zt. If so, Time would be understood as a dimension, as are length, height and depth.
Right now I’m wondering if the point of origin (0,0,0) is the only available point at which a single line may pass through all three planes. If it is, could Time be expressed as infinite points of origin along a single axis, a t-axis? I don’t think so because that would require constantly generated new points of origin. Wouldn’t that seem to disrupt the continuity of the timeline and all things 3-D?
Wait a minute.
We know that points on a line do not require space between them. Isn’t that a definition of infinity? With no space between points on the t-axis, wouldn’t the 3-D universe move smoothly along a timeline? -Even though all things 3-D may constantly be moving in relation to all other things 3-D.
Any movement in 3-D might be “captured” as in a single frame of a video. The “capture” is imaginary, of course, since Time, in the words of Josh Garrels‘ song, “keeps on slipping into the future.”
Can Time ever be expressed by a 2-D plane? If not, then Time incorporates all of the 3-D universe upon each infinitely small point of time and propagates it on to the next infinitely small point on the timeline.
Does this mean that the 3-D universe is newly propagated at each infinitely small movement along the timeline?
Is this not exactly what has been discovered in Quantum Physics? -What Einstein said he’d spent 100 times more thought on than his theories of Relativity, yet he died without disproving? Isn’t this the quantum theory that Niels Bohr and others used to develop the foundation of all modern technology that runs 1/3 of our economy today? What?! Yes to all!
Does this Theory of Time affect my faith? Yes and no.
No, in that I continue in the same faith I had before this understanding came.
Yes, in that miracles no longer seem so far away, and Jesus can heal Schrodinger’s cat.
If you enjoy this kind of thinking, you may enjoy Quantum Enigma, Physics Encounters Consciousness by Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner published by Oxford University Press, 2011.
Disclaimer: Rosenblum and Kuttner are not responsible for my theory of Time espoused above. They only opened my eyes to what traditionally only physicists have known.
ASIDE: A Point on Time Travel
Do you really think we can ever gather up all those points on the 3-D universe graph to reproduce any one point on the timeline of the past? If we could, it would only be one “snapshot”. Time travel remains a wonderful imagination for science fiction. -Sorry, Albert.
The Word in Vision 