The discussion revolves around the conceptual understanding of the space-time fabric, particularly how it is represented in visualizations and the implications of dimensionality. Participants explore the relationship between 3D space and the fourth dimension of time, questioning the adequacy of 2D representations in conveying these concepts.
Participants generally agree that the 2D representations of space-time are limited and do not fully capture the complexities of the concept. However, there is disagreement on the effectiveness of these analogies and how best to visualize the relationship between dimensions.
The discussion highlights limitations in the visualizations used to represent space-time, including the dependence on dimensionality and the challenges in conveying the interaction between space and time.
This is a common misconception. In this analogy the fabric doesn't represent space-time, just reduced space (2D dimensions of it). It shows just the spatial curvature which has some effects on its own, but the main effect of gravitation (mass attraction), cannot be explained without the time dimension. Here are links to better visualizations:gsingh2011 said:I don't understand how the space-time fabric works. I've seen videos where the sun is in the space-time fabric and it makes a ripple in it and the Earth revolves around this.
Yes you have to imagine we live in an universe with less dimensions to understand this curvature visualizations by embedding. The illustrations are 3D, so a curved diagram in it can be 2D at max. The space-time diagrams linked above are not different that that aspect. They just use 1 space & 1 time dimension instead of 2 space dimensions.gsingh2011 said:This works fine if our universe was 2D,
If there was something above the sun in that diagram, it would not be in our universe. The 3D dimensions of these illustrations are a virtual embedding space without physical meaning. It is needed to visualize curvature of the diagram.gsingh2011 said:but what if there was something above the sun in that diagram?
Well you don't. You can only visualize 2 of the 4 space-time dimensions in a 2D diagram.gsingh2011 said:Basically, I'm confused on how you put 3D space along with a fourth dimension time in a 2D plane...
The best way, I suppose, is to suppress two spatial dimensions and view space-time as 2-dimensional.gsingh2011 said:I don't understand how the space-time fabric works. I've seen videos where the sun is in the space-time fabric and it makes a ripple in it and the Earth revolves around this. This works fine if our universe was 2D, but what if there was something above the sun in that diagram? Basically, I'm confused on how you put 3D space along with a fourth dimension time in a 2D plane...