03-02-2009, 03:20 PM
(This post was last modified: 03-02-2009, 03:24 PM by MisterRabbit.)
3D, your first example was much easier for me to visualize, not surprisingly, since it represents space/time and not time/space. But this is definately a helpful illustration that I will have to ponder. It's funny, I've always been drawn to the umbrella as a symbol, but I never knew why. Because it protects from rain? no... maybe this is why.
So, it sounds like from this example that in space/time, as space is expanding, time is experienced as linear, as in the movement of the device along the handle. I can dig that. But trying to imagine time spreading out and space being linear is a whole different ballgame. I can sort of acknowledge it hypothetically, especially with the help of this illustration, but I still can't really see how it could be, or what it would be like to experience that. How do you think this might relate to the descriptions of time/space that people have given us? Like NDE's and stuff like that? Could they help us to visualize how it would be?
Also, your umbrella analogy sounds uncannily like the phenomenon of attractors. It sounds like whichever aspect is the stick part of the umbrella is the attractor, just as the center of a large funnel is the attractor of a ball-bearing released to roll down that funnel to it's base. It will roll around and around in various ways depending on how it is released, but it's movement is always organized around that center to which it is rolling. Aslo...woah I might be coming up with something here...if the attractor or center is time, let's say this is time/space, and the area around which it is travelling is space, then the closer it comes together in space...wait no, it still comes together in space and in time in that analogy. I just don't understand how moving closer in space is moving further apart in time.
Oh and please clarify the term scalar in how it relates to all of this. I've looked at definitions of it, ie a quantity posessing only magnitude like 40mph, but 40mph can't exist unless it's going someplace, like west, which makes it a velocity right?. So, is the point of time and space being scalar that they make eachother a velocity, or motion? but without eachother there is no motion, just as without going somewhere there can never be any 40 mph? so motion = time and space just as 40mph + west = travelling? like without direction there is no mph, and without some sort of speed there is not west in a sense, because there must be a travelling in a directional manner in order for there to be direction...am I getting way off track or is this kind of right on?
oops hey I meant to say, in my ball-funnel example, "let's say this is space/time" instead of "let's say this is time/space" because space/time would be where, I think, the time aspect would behave like an attractor.
So, it sounds like from this example that in space/time, as space is expanding, time is experienced as linear, as in the movement of the device along the handle. I can dig that. But trying to imagine time spreading out and space being linear is a whole different ballgame. I can sort of acknowledge it hypothetically, especially with the help of this illustration, but I still can't really see how it could be, or what it would be like to experience that. How do you think this might relate to the descriptions of time/space that people have given us? Like NDE's and stuff like that? Could they help us to visualize how it would be?
Also, your umbrella analogy sounds uncannily like the phenomenon of attractors. It sounds like whichever aspect is the stick part of the umbrella is the attractor, just as the center of a large funnel is the attractor of a ball-bearing released to roll down that funnel to it's base. It will roll around and around in various ways depending on how it is released, but it's movement is always organized around that center to which it is rolling. Aslo...woah I might be coming up with something here...if the attractor or center is time, let's say this is time/space, and the area around which it is travelling is space, then the closer it comes together in space...wait no, it still comes together in space and in time in that analogy. I just don't understand how moving closer in space is moving further apart in time.
Oh and please clarify the term scalar in how it relates to all of this. I've looked at definitions of it, ie a quantity posessing only magnitude like 40mph, but 40mph can't exist unless it's going someplace, like west, which makes it a velocity right?. So, is the point of time and space being scalar that they make eachother a velocity, or motion? but without eachother there is no motion, just as without going somewhere there can never be any 40 mph? so motion = time and space just as 40mph + west = travelling? like without direction there is no mph, and without some sort of speed there is not west in a sense, because there must be a travelling in a directional manner in order for there to be direction...am I getting way off track or is this kind of right on?
oops hey I meant to say, in my ball-funnel example, "let's say this is space/time" instead of "let's say this is time/space" because space/time would be where, I think, the time aspect would behave like an attractor.