How is Time the 4th Dimension?
Now ask yourself, how would movement in all these dimensions be possible, if there was no concept of time? You will find that dynamism in space would not be possible if there was no time! When all of those ants were moving, they ‘moved’ in time too! So the ant on the thread had not one but two degrees of freedom! One was space and the other, time. That is, it was moving in two dimensions. Similarly in this world, we move in three space dimensions plus one ‘time dimension’. However, time as a dimension is unique and different from other space dimensions. In space dimension, you can move ahead and backwards, there is no restriction on that. However in time, you can only move in one direction. In time, you cannot move backwards, only forward! This has far reaching implications which we will discuss further, but first let us understand how Einstein’s special relativity changed our perceptions of space and time. Einstein and the Unification of Space Time In 1905, a Swiss patent clerk, Alber
