Why Time is Spatial

Time is a spatial dimension. You may think it is different to the first three dimensions, but here is why it is spatial.

Let’s start by trying to imagine the fifth dimension. If time is perplexing, then how can we even imagine the fifth dimension? One way is to look for paradoxes in Spacetime, the four dimensional universe. Then think about how a higher dimension solves these paradoxes.

If there was no fifth dimension and you traveled at the speed of light, then you would observe only one frame of the 3D universe. This frame would appear as frozen in time. Think of a film-strip. It’s a movie when the stills are moving and we see each frame one after the next. But if you were traveling at the same speed as the film, then you would be looking at one of the stills in the film.

Travelling at the speed of light and being stuck in the same frozen frame of spacetime would be a lonely experience. If another person also travelled at the speed of light from a different location to you, then they would be lonely too. Both would actually never see the universe that each sees because they would be stuck in different frames.  But, as soon as both started to slow down, it would then be possible to come into contact. Time as the 4th dimension allows us to make contact with each other and to see other frames of reality.

That said, when slowing down from light speed and navigating the previous frames of reality, it would appear as time going backward. While this is going on, a question arises. What do we call the linear line of events in our bubble when traveling up or down the time line? Let me explain. If what we see is time in reverse, then what is the linear direction of our time that we experience if I was drinking a cup of coffee while observing this past? Now we have a paradox. What is the true direction of time in this example? Is it the time in the bubble where you are drinking your coffee or is it the time you can see outside where the direction happens to be going backward?

Einstein taught us that time is not constant. Rather it is different for each observer depending on how fast they are traveling. But from the example above, we can now see that time is also not strictly directional from the past to the present to the future. In the scenario above, we have at one point gone from the present to the past, but done so inside our bubble of time which is still going forward. There are essentially two time lines, but one of them has now been relegated as a spatial dimension.

Now think about changing speed. Imagine slowing down or traveling faster than light speed. If we are able to zoom up and down the four dimensional time line, then fourth dimensional time is spatial and the fifth dimension is now our time or our experience of time. 

So a person in the fifth dimension could travel to any time and place in the fourth dimensional universe as easy as travelling through a spatial grid of some kind and still experience time. But you may argue that travelling back in time would break the Law of causation. It wouldn’t for this simple reason. To travel at the speed of light you need to be massless. And if massless, then you then cannot interact with the frames in the timeline. You could only observe them.

Now, let’s do a short mental exercise. If the third dimension is made up of two dimensional planes stacked upon another. The second dimension is made up of one dimensional lines stacked next to each other. Is it then that the fourth dimension is made up of three dimensional frames in a linear direction of time. The fifth dimension then would be a grid of four dimensional frames like a 3D film strip where you would have spatial access to any spacetime frame allowing you to observe any time and location in the universe. And with this access, you would still experience your own time, thus time has now become the fifth dimension.

Could it be then that stepping up a dimension forces all lower dimensions to become spatial? And by extension, the highest dimension become time?

I think yes. Why? Because this understanding easily solves the paradoxes we struggle with when studying Spacetime. Further, when we think of time we can think it is one dimensional. A line that has two directions. Past and Future and whatever dimension we experience as time, remember that it is only one extra dimension. The difference is, it contains all lower dimensions.