Insert Rocky Horror Lyrics Here

I've been thinking about time travel a lot lately. Well really I've been thinking about higher dimensions in general a lot lately and time travel goes right along with that train of thought. To know why my brain has been going down this road check out the following video: Imagining the Tenth Dimension. For those of you who don't have the eleven minutes to invest (first of all, you're missing out, it's a total mind trip) the basic gist of this heady heady video is all about visualizing higher dimensions as a series of "points, lines and folds." As a quick example, imagine an ant traveling across a two-dimensional piece of paper. As far as the ant is concerned the paper is just a long flat surface. It walks in a straight line trying to come to the "end" of the paper just as we would fly a ship through space trying to get to the "end" of the universe. But if you used three-dimensional space, and folded that two-dimensional paper to another point on the sheet, you could essentially make that ant "jump" instantly from one point to another point in its universe. Similarly if you could "fold" three-dimensional space through the fourth dimension, you could jump instantly from one point in the universe to a point billions of light years away...

As most anyone who has a basic understanding of Einstein (or even basic science fiction physics) knows, the key to time travel lies in the fourth dimension. Time is the dimension that exists above the length, width and depth we all comprehend. It is the dimension that connects "space" as we know it now to "space" as it will be a minute from now. Or in its broadest sense it is the dimension that connects the Big Bang to the very end of the universe. In theory the ability to time travel exists in the ability to move through the fourth dimension in the same way we currently move through the third. But rather than driving down the street or taking an airplane to Australia or a rocket ship to the moon, we are taking a very different kind of highway through minutes, hours or millennia.

Different movies depict time travel in different ways. The one that comes to the mind of most people in my generation, of course, is the Back to the Future trilogy. In those movies, time travel is presented as an instantaneous transition. Doc Brown and Marty McFly jump thirty, seventy and a hundred years in a seamless leap. I don't quite get how that could happen. We can travel through three dimensions but it takes a finite amount of time. And it requires us to travel across the space in between. We can't just suddenly move from New Jersey to Australia. That would violate Einstein's theory of relativity that says nothing can move faster than the speed of light. So it would stand to reason that we can also not move through time without it taking a certain duration as we cross over all that time in between (unless, as the video says, we could "fold" instantly through the fifth dimension to whatever point in the fourth we wish). Of course then again, moving through space requires time, a higher dimensional measurement. So perhaps moving through time requires a higher type of measurement we haven't thought of.

Another thought. What would it be like to "see" in four dimensions? Well how would a theoretical two-dimensional being see us? Figure a piece of paper bisecting your body and a 2D guy looking at you. He'd only be able to see whatever length of body he happened to be aligned with. If the paper was bisecting you from top to bottom, he'd only see a "cross-section" of your 3D self: a line that changed from brown to flesh colored to the white of your shirt to the blue of your jeans. In order to comprehend your entire body, you'd have to move across the line of paper entirely. The 2D man would have to compile each cross-section into an overall picture of what you might look like. Similarly we as 3D people can only see "cross-sections" of the fourth dimension. For instance, as I sit writing this, I can only see the man sitting across from me as he exist in this exact second. If I were to see him "fourth-dimensionally" I would see essentially a blurred three-dimensional line of every movement he made before now and after now. This is a topic they discuss in Imagining the Tenth Dimension as well as in the book Slaughterhouse Five (where the main character gets "unstuck in time"). Seeing in four dimensions allows you to see every moment of a person's life all at once...

But this is where I get stuck… though I'm certain I've already lost most of you well before now. Would seeing in four dimensions allow me to see every moment of his life. Would I see him simultaneously as a baby and as a corpse? Or is it like three-dimensional space where I can only see the parts I am also a part of? While I certainly have the ability to see Australia (since I can travel through space to get there) I can't actually see it unless I physically go there. Similarly, will I only see this man's full fourth-dimensional self for the duration of moments that I am also a part of… the moments where he and I are in the same proximity? He has been sitting here in the hotel lounge since I arrived here with my laptop and perhaps before I leave he will at some point walk to the elevator. If I were to see him in four dimensions, would I only see him that far? That would make sense to me.

But what about people I see all the time? Every moment I'm with Lauren, would I see every moment of fourth-dimensional time we have shared? Or would I only see the beginning and end of each individual meeting? When I return to our room will I see her simultaneously from the moment we met through the moment we die? Or will I only see her from the moment I come through the door until the moment one of us leaves?

Then again, the ability to see every moment of somebody's life in four dimensions wouldn't require time travel at all. All of those moments would exist in the present. This is one of the ideas explored in Slaughterhouse Five. For people who can see all moments of a person's life, death is not something to be scared of since you can always see and interact with a dead person as they were when they were alive. You can see and experience past good times even when you are currently experiencing bad times. They all exist simultaneously. But it seems to me that seeing the fourth dimension in this way would probably require command of an even higher dimension. At least the fifth and possibly even the sixth. Because again, even though I exist in three-dimensions, I can't see every part of the third dimension… I'm limited by barriers such as walls, trees, the horizon and just pure distance. Being a part of the third dimension only means I can travel through it. But being able to see all of three-dimensional space at once would require the use of a higher dimension or perhaps a higher plane of existence. Likewise existing in the fourth dimension would only allow one to travel through time, not see the entire timeline at a glance.

Yes friends, these are the kinds of thoughts that keep me up at one-thirty on a Sunday night. I have no real conclusion to this so I simply leave you to your own thoughts and confusion.

(also, I'm certain there are countless typos in this post but I have no energy or brain capacity after all this to go back an edit… perhaps later.)