Time in 3 Dimensions

A direct link to this video can be found at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4FpPp8MPIQ
In Twisted Dimensions, we talked about a way of imagining how our 3D world is constrained by a D3-brane and a D7-brane, and how that relates to the way of visualizing reality that we've been playing with here. In entries like You Can't Get There From Here and What Would a Linelander Really See? I've tried to describe in more detail how there might be conceptual similarities between one group of dimensions and another. In my book I suggested that our reality can be broken down into what I called self-similar "triads", and this basic concept is encoded into the helix I had created for this project:

The repeating line, branch, fold metaphor that we use with this project gives us a powerful way to keep imagining one spatial dimension stacked upon another. If we look at the helix diagram, we see that the one, the four, and the seven are connected, as are the two, five, and eight, and as are the three, six, and nine, and this is part of the mental trick we use to allow ourselves to imagine many more spatial dimensions than most would have thought possible. This time I'd like to talk more about the idea that "time" (which is not a dimension but a direction) is part of an enfolded structure that encompasses the fourth through sixth dimension, and this structure shares many of the characteristics that we are familiar with from our experience of 3D space. Please note, though: when we talk about the third dimension, we are automatically talking about the second and first dimension: in other words, a 3-dimensional object has length, width, and breadth, so the first and second dimension are automatically included in a discussion of the third dimension. Likewise now, when we speak of the sixth dimension, this means we are then automatically considering the fourth and fifth dimension which are part of the sixth (and by extension, the first through third as well).

And why do I insist that all of the different possible timelines for our universe are not just in the fourth dimension, where science has traditionally allocated them? I believe this relates to the quantum physics idea of every possible aspect of our reality being represented by a wave function.

Events that are so unlikely they are outside spacetime
Here is a quote I have used before from recognized physics expert Michio Kaku, which represents the established viewpoint of quantum mechanics:

"... if we could "see" the wave function of a person, it would look remarkably like the person himself. However the wave function also gently seeps out into space, meaning that there is a small probability that the person can be found on the moon. (In fact, the person's wave function actually spreads out throughout the universe.) "
- Theoretical Physicist Michio Kaku, from his book "Parallel Worlds"

With this project, I'm proposing that our reality comes not from the fourth dimension, but the fifth, which is where Kaluza proved and Einstein eventually agreed that the field equations for gravity and light for our universe are resolved. What I have often suggested in the past is that the "wave function of all possibilities for our universe" that quantum mechanics experts like Dr. Kaku talk about must come from the sixth dimension rather than the fifth, and that the often-used "small probability of appearing on the moon" example is much easier to understand when we see that this is true. After all, if every completely unlikely event exists as part of the wave function of our reality, then even if the likelihood of those events is astonishingly small, the number of those unlikely events is also astonishingly large: surely the two factors must balance each other out somewhat, in which case there should be events each of us have witnessed within our lifetimes which should fall within that astronomically unlikely realm of "nearly impossible" events for our universe, and many of those would be even stranger than people popping out of their homes and reappearing on the moon.

Everett's Many Worlds Interpretation and Unlikely Events
A similar argument is often used for the evidence of extraterrestrial life: even if the odds of some other race having risen to dominance in the universe are astonishingly small, the universe is astonishingly large, so why are we not constantly being bothered by alien visitors? One possible answer is that we are but that information is somehow being hidden from us. Here's another more likely answer: that particular possibility does indeed exist within the wave function of all possible outcomes for our universe, but it is not part of the wave function that you or I are currently observing. This brings to mind the Anthropic Principle, which is central to my project, and which coincidentally is receiving renewed interest now that there are more mainstream scientists willing to consider the following idea which is central to my project: all of the other different-initial-conditions universes--and all of the other parallel universes resulting from chance and choice for our own universe--do exist within the multiverse (or ultimately, the omniverse), and are just as real as our own.

But why can't we see them? Why aren't people reappearing on the moon, why don't we wander into other universes where gravity has a different value, why aren't we part of the universe where alien invaders have destroyed the planet, or where it's 2008 and Elvis is still alive?

"Time" as a Sphere
The answer, I believe, is within my way of visualizing how our reality is constructed: in a sense, time is 3-dimensional, and the fifth dimensional reality we are witnessing is like the 2D image we see on a screen. If I look at a picture, it seems completely normal to me that I can't see through walls or around objects: unless we start moving around in 3D dimensions, which then allows us to see "behind" and "around" the objects on the screen. If we imagine time as a sphere, then we can suppose that our 3D reality as we're experiencing it at this very instant is at the south pole, and the timelines of possibility extend out northward. All of the possible (entropy-driven) futures that could extend from "now" are visible to us, up to the equator. But the other half of the sphere, from the equator and northward, are hidden from view. They exist as part of the sphere, but there's no path visible to us to see how to get to those other points that exist as part of our sphere: it's like they're on the dark side of the moon.

Imagining what's at "right angles" to the 3rd dimension
Does this metaphor work completely? I believe that it does within Dr. Elliot McGucken's Moving Dimensions Theory, which expands our minds with the knowledge that our 3D universe is already moving through a 4th dimension which is effectively expanding one planck length at a time at the speed of light. If we can imagine that each one of those new quanta, or frames, that represent our 3D universe are the south pole of a new 3D time sphere, we can see how that constantly revised sphere can ultimately encompass the wave function of all possible states within the entirety of that "time-sphere", but this visualization explains why only a certain subset of those possible states are accessible to us from our current position within spacetime.

To be clear, though, that 3D "time-sphere" we are imagining is much more mind-boggling than just a round ball: because that south pole point we have imagined is at the center of a hypersphere, extending out in the fourth dimension and beyond! For more about that idea, please read my entries Hypercubes and Plato's Cave, and Time in Either Direction.

To wrap this entry up, here, for fun, are the karaoke versions of three of the 26 songs I have created for this project, and these are relevant to the discussion we've just had: the songs are "The Anthropic Viewpoint", "The Unseen Eye", and "Everything Fits Together".


A direct link to this video can be found at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EB3MzLoB5uw


A direct link to this video can be found at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHr_IVxtfgs


A direct link to this video can be found at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqvpDMtnehk

Enjoy the journey!

Rob Bryanton

PS - for further exploration of the idea that "some events are so unlikely that they will take longer than the life of the universe to occur" must place those events in the sixth dimension, read Unlikely Events and Timelessness. For the surprising connections between this project's use of "triads" as a concept and the Kabbalah, read Jake Kotze and Mystical Numbers. And for more explanation of why this project insists that our reality comes from the fifth dimension rather than the fourth, read entries like The Fifth Dimension Isn't Magic, or Your Fifth-Dimensional Self.

PPS - yesterday on the tenth dimension forum, member "nimblesquirrel" mentioned Heim Theory, which started out based upon our four dimensions of spacetime, plus two additional time-like dimensions: another way of connecting to what we've just talked about in this blog. Heim Theory was then extended to eight dimensions, which I have talked about here in this blog as being the highest dimension where any physical expressions of reality might occur. The theory has also been extended to a 12-dimension version - whoops, no correlation there, but interesting to read about nonetheless.

Next: Crossed Wires in the Brain