One of the enduring mysteries Einstein left us is what physically happens to the time dimension as one approach the speed of light. Is it replaced by another dimension as F. Eren ÇıracıoÄŸlu suggested in his comment to our article “What antimatter can tell us about the geometry of our world?” Mar. 31, 2016 or does it vanish.Â
The answer is none of the above.
As Eren pointed out in that comment “According to GTR, time perception of the traveler doesn’t change, it is independent from his speed. So in a sense, the traveler always carries his own time concept with him. What changes or transforms is the time concept of the rest frame once he was in, which he is not bound with it anymore.” He goes on to say that becomes the spatial dimension, and the traveling object carries its own time concept with it to the next 1 higher space-time environment.
However this would seem to contradict Einstein’s concept that time and space are merged because the transforming of the time dimension to a higher space-time one means that it is independent of the three spatial dimensions that already exist. In other words to be true to Einstein one must view what happens to the time dimension with respect to those dimensions.
If one assumes Einstein was correct that space and time are one in the same one must assume the time dimension does disappear at the instant a reference frame approaches or equals the speed of light as Eren had suggested in his comment but that it is completely converted to a spatial one. In others words we believe the axis of time does not vanish but coexists with a fourth *spatial* dimension and how our perception of it and its magnitude is depended on the velocity of an observer with respect to what he is observing.
Later Jeff
Copyright Jeffrey O’Callaghan 2016