Time is a fundamentally different type of dimension than space
One of the most common questions we can ask about any two distinct locations is, “What’s the shortest distance between those two points?” By default, most of us will give the same answer that Archimedes gave more than 2,000 years ago: a straight line. If you take a flat sheet of paper and put two points down on it absolutely anywhere, you can always connect those two points with any line, curve,…
The most common question people ask about two distinct locations is "What's the shortest distance between them?" Traditionally, the answer has been a straight line, much like Archimedes deduced over 2,000 years ago. This holds true for any flat surface, no matter how the points are positioned or oriented. However, our Universe operates under four dimensions - three of space and one of time.
The shortest distance between two spacetime events is not a straight line but rather a path through spacetime. This concept is grounded in the Pythagorean theorem, which determines the distance between two points in a plane. In our Universe, the distance between two points is calculated as the square root of the sum of the squares of the differences in each of the three (x, y, and z) directions.
This calculation remains the same irrespective of the orientation of the x, y, and z dimensions, or any transformations applied to the geometry connecting the two points.
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