POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.off-topic : 4D : Re: 4D Server Time
5 Sep 2024 07:22:22 EDT (-0400)
  Re: 4D  
From: Kevin Wampler
Date: 21 Oct 2009 13:27:00
Message: <4adf4464$1@news.povray.org>
clipka wrote:
> Darren New schrieb:
>> clipka wrote:
>>> Well, AFAIK there's actually no fundamental reason to apply different 
>>> "measuring tapes" to time and space: 
>>
>> It's not measured *quite* the same way... The distance between two 
>> events is sqrt(x*x+y*y+z*z-t*t) Note the - sign.
> 
> It /is/ measured in the same way - it's just that the Pythagorean 
> theorem doesn't hold in our peculiar (3+1)D universe...

I fail to see how stating that the Pythagorean theorem doesn't hold 
isn't just another way of saying that distances are measured differently 
in our spacetime?

Is you point that in space time there *is* a well-defined notion of 
distance which unifies both the spatial and temporal aspects, and thus 
we don't really need to use one set of units for space and another set 
for time?  Your comment about light-seconds would make more sense in 
this context.  If this is the case perhaps I've been misunderstanding 
your point form the beginning, since I'd surely agree with this.


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