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Time is a dimension, but not like space

(bigthink.com)
171 points belter | 2 comments | 17 Oct 24 15:29 UTC | HN request time: 0.405s | source
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nyc111 ◴[17 Oct 24 15:55 UTC] No.41870842[source]▶
I would really appreciate if people writing these types of articles first give rigorous and unique definitions of space and time.
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blackbear_ ◴[17 Oct 24 17:36 UTC] No.41871770[source]▶
Something like (from Wikipedia):

> In the presence of gravity spacetime is described by a curved 4-dimensional manifold for which the tangent space to any point is a 4-dimensional Minkowski space.

Perhaps? A good way to lose 99% of the readers before the end of the first sentence.

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1. zbobet2012 ◴[20 Oct 24 04:04 UTC] No.41892770[source]▶
I'm a huge fan of providing laymen explanations. And at some point if you _actually_ want to understand you have to stop using those and pickup and understand the math.

http://therisingsea.org/post/mast30026/

Has a good introduction to space, and the notion of a manifold, and what a Minkowski space is.

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2. verzali ◴[20 Oct 24 21:57 UTC] No.41898821[source]▶
Ok, but almost nobody is going to read an article that requires you to work through 21 lectures, 9 tutorials, and 3 assignments first. It'd be great if they did, and it'd be nice to give the link for interested people, but otherwise it is just making the subject inaccessible to almost everyone.