I also disagree with calling "time" a dimension.
In fact, I disagree with a lot of ideas about "time". People treat "time" like a tangible object, just because we gave it a name. "Travel in time" "Bending time" counting it as a dimension, which otherwis were just directional markers, when did time become a direction?
Then they just roll with it - and base tons of research ON the assumption that time is an object and a dimension and a place in some country, that we can travel to...
So, what would you label it instead? How would you characterise time?
What is a dimension, to you?
Time is whatever we name the difference between one physical event and another. Dimensions are directional cues.
It's all arbitrary.
Why don't you include "hope" as a dimension? Or "life"? Or gravity? Why is "time" special? Imho, "time" doesn't even deserve a name It is arbitrary, and it is a human trait to regard something as untangible as "time" as a real physical object "let's travel through time! Yes - right through it, as if it was a ginger-bread dough!"
There are some difficulties with including "hope" in an equation, not to mention the fact that it would make little sense trying to do so in the first place.
Time, however, is essential when attempting to describe the universe. It's not arbitrary and it has directionality.
All you need to study it is a simple watch and, um, some time and space. And if you have a very large object nearby, you can observe some truly amazing things. Not intangible at all.
Maybe you can help.
I am still confused as to whether Time more resembles a simple bipolar vector, its undeniable force traveling in opposite directions, all of existence along for the ride (only accounting for ONE dimension, mind you) or is it actually more like an explosion of an infinite number of vectors radially expanding in every possibly direction, from every event susceptible to Time and intersecting randomly at every other event susceptible, along with all vectors being somewhat perturbed by all other events, some of which Time itself has not yet encountered.
If this were the actual state of time, an infinite number of vectors radiating from the first event, then perturbed by every other event, would it not account for some of the indefinably dis-ordinate properties of Dark Energy?
I believe most accepted models account for a single dimension, a single temporal property as opposed to several spatial properties.
It is an interesting idea to use several temporal properties in a model, but I don't think i's warranted, and I suspect the mathematics would be hairy, to say the least.
Hairy and harried mathematics, indeed.
I think you might have meant several temporal properties as impossible to do more than surmise (since this one we can interpret seems to be the most we conceive of in our right minds). We already accept, for the most part, spatial properties to be "several" in our simplified view: at least three we can define and imagine, right?
AS you asked; What is a dimension? What properties do specific influences (or errors in the established math) pose which might lead one to accept that those errors in the math may represent an additional dimension?
I honestly did not expect a serious answer. I posed an impossible question that one might pose while every one is sitting around stoned, looking into a fire or something.
I expected a
face.
... But thank you.
I have been wondering about just how time works against matter (I do not mean rust, chaos, entropy or anti-entropy) and just how the space between is filled (it IS filled with something and something else that forces it against the rest of the somethings, we know this and can prove it.) for a long time.
Again, I do not have sufficient education to expect an actual answer from you. I am a layman.
I do have fun thinking though and an infinite set of vectors of time emanating from every "event," each vector on its own course, coursing through the matter which each time vector encounters, is altered by every event that follows, yet dragging every particle of matter along into a single future, just as long as another, stronger time vector does not capture that bit of matter for a while, until another even stronger time vector (strong could probably mean young in this context, since each vector is caused by an "Event") is one of the fun things I think about, however impossible it may be to quantify.