New theory proposes time has three dimensions, with space as a secondary effect:
Time, not space plus time, might be the single fundamental property in which all physical phenomena occur, according to a new theory by a University of Alaska Fairbanks scientist.
The theory also argues that time comes in three dimensions rather than just the single one we experience as continual forward progression. Space emerges as a secondary manifestation.
"These three time dimensions are the primary fabric of everything, like the canvas of a painting," said associate research professor Gunther Kletetschka at the UAF Geophysical Institute. "Space still exists with its three dimensions, but it's more like the paint on the canvas rather than the canvas itself."
Those thoughts are a marked difference from generally accepted physics, which holds that a single dimension of time plus the three dimensions of space constitute reality. This is known as spacetime, the concept developed more than a century ago that views time and space as one entity.
Kletetschka's mathematical formula of six total dimensions—of time and space combined—could bring scientists closer to finding the single unifying explanation of the universe.
Kletetschka's work, published April 21 in Reports in Advances of Physical Science, adds to a long-running body of research by theoretical physicists on a subject outside of mainstream physics.
He writes that his mathematical framework for three-dimensional time improves on others' proposals by making testable reproductions of known particle masses and other physical properties.
"Earlier 3D time proposals were primarily mathematical constructs without these concrete experimental connections," he said. "My work transforms the concept from an interesting mathematical possibility into a physically testable theory with multiple independent verification channels."
What is 3D time?
Three-dimensional time is a theory in which time, like space, has multiple independent directions—typically imagined as three axes of time motion, similar in concept to the spatial X, Y and Z axes.
Imagine you are walking down a straight path, moving forward and therefore experiencing time as we know it. Now imagine another path that crosses the first one, going sideways.
If you could step onto that sideways path and remain in the same moment of "regular time," you might find that things could be slightly different—perhaps a different version of the same day. Moving along this perpendicular second path could let you explore different outcomes of that day without going backward or forward in time as we know it.
The existence of those different outcomes is the second dimension of time. The means to transition from one outcome to another is the third dimension.
[...] earlier theories, for example, describe multiple time dimensions in which cause-and-effect relationships are potentially ambiguous. Kletetschka's theory ensures that causes still precede effects, even with multiple time dimensions, just in a more complex mathematical structure.
A grand unifier?
The pursuit of three-dimensional time theory is believed by Bars and other theoretical physicists to be an avenue for helping answer some big physics questions that have stumped scientists.
Kletetschka's approach might even help resolve the grandest of all unresolved physics challenges: unifying quantum mechanics—the behavior of particles at the smallest scales—and gravity into a single quantum theory of gravity.
A quantum theory of gravity could lead to, or become, a grand theory of the universe—the so-called "theory of everything." The elusive unifying theory would unite the four fundamental forces of nature—electromagnetism, strong nuclear force, weak nuclear force and gravity.
[phys.org] Editor's note (6/24/2025): While Kletetschka's theory of three-dimensional time presents an intriguing new framework, its results have not yet been accepted by the broader scientific community. The theory is still in the early stages of scrutiny and has not been published in leading physics journals or independently verified through experiments or peer-reviewed replication. Publishing in Reports in Advances of Physical Sciences (World Scientific Publishing), while a legitimate step, is not sufficient for a theory making such bold claims. This journal is relatively low-impact and niche, and its peer review does not match the rigorous scrutiny applied by top-tier journals like Physical Review Letters or Nature Physics. For a paradigm-shifting idea to gain acceptance, it must withstand critical evaluation by the wider physics community, be published in highly regarded journals, and provide reproducible predictions that align with existing evidence—standards this work has not yet met.
Journal Reference: Gunther Kletetschka, Three-Dimensional Time: A Mathematical Framework for Fundamental Physics, Reports in Advances of Physical Sciences (2025). DOI: 10.1142/S2424942425500045
(Score: 2) by crb3 on Wednesday July 02, @04:01AM (3 children)
Maybe now we'll find out if C is the sample-rate or the Nyquist-point.
(Score: 5, Funny) by driverless on Wednesday July 02, @06:11AM (2 children)
Doesn't time have relative dimensions? In space, I mean?
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Wednesday July 02, @06:45AM
Who knows. (That'll be the Who [wikipedia.org] with a PhD.)
(Score: 2) by Tork on Wednesday July 02, @03:38PM
Nope, just one.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 4, Insightful) by khallow on Wednesday July 02, @04:43AM (5 children)
For example, in the third section [worldscientific.com] of the paper, they claim particular ratios of eigenvalues for a Laplacian style operator (second derivatives with respect to the three time dimensions). The problem with that is that you can get a variety of eigenvalues depending on how you set up the conditions of the temporal space that the above operator acts on. I think you can generate any ratio of increasing amount (1:x:y where 1
To elaborate on this a bit, this is very close to sound resonance in a 3-D box. One can adjust the variety of fundamental vibration modes (the frequency of which is an eigenvalue of a Laplacian operator) by changing the three sides of the box. In particular the 1:4.5:21 ratio mentioned in the paper can easily be obtained by setting the sides of your box to the same ratios! But then you can change those ratios to anything else too.
Nor are we given a reason for why this operator is supposed to be important though I gather it's supposed to be some analogue of Dirac's equation (crudely, eigenvalues of a Laplacian-like operator are associated with mass of the particle in Dirac's model of quantum electrodynamics).
I guess it feels like some shifty papers I've read before where things are done and then suddenly juicy stuff happened with it never being clear how one jumped from the start to the juicy stage.
(Score: 2) by Barenflimski on Wednesday July 02, @06:36AM
100% what came to mind when I read this too.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Wednesday July 02, @03:40PM (1 child)
Like putting too much air into a balloon!
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday July 03, @02:12AM
(Score: 2) by corey on Thursday July 03, @04:31AM (1 child)
You lost me at eigenvalue. :(
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday July 03, @05:16AM
For the "Laplacian" (sorry, I said it was a Lagrangian, wrong name) I mentioned above, it has a property that a lot of these maps have, namely, that the entire space is spanned by eigenvectors. That means that any vector can be decomposed into its projections along each of the eigenvector directions (typically called "eigenfunction" since the vectors in this case are all functions on the spacetime coordinates) . Then the Laplacian acts on each eigenfunction by scaling it by the corresponding eigenvalue associated with that eigenfunction and adding all the rescaled components back together to get the Laplacian of the original vector.
The Laplacian actually has a stronger property, that all its eigenvalues are real and greater or equal to zero. And with typical restrictions on the space of functions (for example, that they need to be zero on a boundary, like my box example before), the eigenvalues form a discrete ladder of increasing numbers. So that's a lot of the implicit structure assumed by the paper.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Wednesday July 02, @06:23AM
There are lots of weird unsupported statements in the paper like:
"The theory predicts mass ratios:"
why? how?
Then author quotes quark and lepton masses which are not in the mass ratios in the previous equation. WTF?
Lots of typos like the author doesn't know how to drive latex.
Stinks of crank.
(Score: 5, Touché) by ledow on Wednesday July 02, @08:28AM (5 children)
We're gonna have to change the Back To The Future movies.
Not only can you go backwards and forwards in time, but now you can go left and right in time, and up and down too.
(Score: 2) by pkrasimirov on Wednesday July 02, @03:03PM (2 children)
You mean Back To The Right Future?
(Score: 3, Touché) by Gaaark on Wednesday July 02, @08:50PM (1 child)
Or, Back...and to the left Future?
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 03, @06:48PM
Well, three lefts do make a right
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 03, @12:49AM
Sounds like Heinlein's "The Number of the Beast."
(Score: 2) by corey on Thursday July 03, @04:36AM
It’s kind of covered the 2nd movie though - remember the doc explains to stop Biff becoming the kingpin he shows the two separate timelines on the blackboard. So he has to go back to the 50s and stop him getting the almanac, which led to the second timeline.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 02, @12:18PM (11 children)
Or could it be like stuff where it's convenient for calculations but doesn't have to actually exist in Reality.
e.g. it's just a useful concept when you are measuring the rate/speed of change by comparing with the speed/rate of change of something else.
(Score: 3, Touché) by shrewdsheep on Wednesday July 02, @01:36PM (5 children)
So you are saying time doesn't exist? Please repeat that in two minutes.
(Score: 4, Funny) by DannyB on Wednesday July 02, @01:42PM (3 children)
I'll get back to you on that in one quarter of a galactic rotation.
The server will be down for replacement of vacuum tubes, belts, worn parts and lubrication of gears and bearings.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday July 02, @08:57PM (2 children)
Is that rotation relative to YOU or to ME?
shit... my pants just fell down...
;)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday July 02, @09:25PM (1 child)
I'll get back to you on that when Andromeda and the Milky Way merge.
The server will be down for replacement of vacuum tubes, belts, worn parts and lubrication of gears and bearings.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 02, @09:43PM
They already have
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 03, @01:31AM
I said Time dimension. Please reread more carefully before replying.
Couldn't things be changing without an actual dimension? That way there is no actual past (within this universe's context, but there could be outside) even though the math (to make things easier) might make you think there is.
For example, say I run a pacman game in an emulator, from the context of the game there is no past. I using the emulator from the "outside" can run the game faster or slower but the ghosts remain slower than pacman.
I can make snapshots of the pacman game so there is a past to me, but from within the game, there's no past for pacman to travel to.
So within the pacman universe there is no time dimension, but there could still be "two minutes later" from the perspective within the game.
Thus is there any actual law of our universe that requires a Time Dimension to exist in our universe?
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday July 02, @05:56PM (1 child)
I'll give you a serious answer, obviously, no, it does not "have to". However whatever you replace it with, would have to be able to simulate it pretty well most of the time so it is more likely than not that it has to exist.
I don't think you can build a theoretical model of two black holes (or other "big gravity things") passing nearby each other without time as one of the coordinates.
There's a math model assuming it exists that worked for the precession of the perihelion of Mercury. In the 1850s astronomers thought that was certain proof there was another planet out there (ironically, they were correct, for the wrong reasons, in that Pluto was eventually discovered...) and they did some precise measurements about 110 years ago "proving" the relativity theory works. There's a pretty interesting wikipedia article along the lines of "everyone knows it was proven" but almost nobody knows the details and the current state of the art seems to be the known error value is about 1/43rd the value predicted by general relativity calculations. So, sure, 2% off has in previous scientific research eventually resulted in a newer more detailed lower error theory. Its surprising how inaccurate our understanding STILL is of mercury's orbit. You'd assume in the current year every parameter would be known to like ten decimal places; not so, mercury's precession is only known to somewhat more than two decimal places, this surprised me, anyway.
If there were a better model of time than it being at least one dimension or its multiple dimensions collapsing to "essentially one on a human scale" the new model would have a rough time of it because it appears it would have to simulate or "boil down to" special and general relativity working most of the time fairly accurately and THAT models at least one time dimension.
I mean, sure, its possible that some Wolfram rule based computation engine "cellular automata"-alike thing essentially runs a computer program that simulates time having a dimension while time doesn't really exist. In the sense that centrifugal force, as a discrete field, does not exist, but it "appears" as an effect.
Another pretty good analogy is lotsa calculators never had a way to calculate trig functions, they can only calculate taylor expansions that approximate, for example, a sine. You can build a perfectly capable trigonometry-level calculator that can't calculate sines or cosines in a certain technical sense its calculating taylor expansions of polynomials that merely approxmate (very closely) those trig functions. So there's plenty of pocket scientific calculators that can't calculate a sine, but they're perfectly usable because they can emulate or function as if they do. I was bored enough to look up how to write a sine in assembly language from scratch and there's other options aside from Taylor series, pretty cool. I never really thought of using Chebyshev polynomials but yeah I guess that would work in a using a sledgehammer to squash a mosquitto sense.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 04, @12:40AM
I can make snapshots of the pacman game so there could be pasts to me, but from within the game, there's no past for pacman to travel to.
So within the pacman universe there is no time dimension, but there could still be "two minutes later" from the perspective within the game.
The math for the pacman universe could indeed have a time dimension, and having time could make it easier to calculate stuff for that universe and the math could be 100% close other than not being able to time travel. But that doesn't mean there's a past from within that universe.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday July 02, @08:53PM (1 child)
There are theories where Time emerges from change: if nothing changed, time would not exist.
Makes sense, really.
Just have it that time doesn't really "exist": we are only able to 'track time' BECAUSE things change.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 03, @12:59AM
> ... 'track time'
David Bowie might like to have a word with you?
I said that time may change me
But I can't trace time
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcrPy1kzzaY [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Thursday July 03, @04:02PM
I've wondered about multiple dimensions of time ever since the idea was mentioned in an article about loop quantum gravity, where a time direction was defined as on in which entropy increases. The author said he couldn't imagine what two-dimensional time would be like.
So I started wondering about having multiple futures.
Isn't that what some interpretations of quantum mechanics discuss? Multidimensional time would leave lots of room for such uncertainty. Locally, it would seem much like the way it look now, with an uncertain future and, presumably, also an uncertain past.
The big snag in my thinking was that I couldn't see any reason for this to involve anything but infinite-dimensional time. Which didn't really fit into relativity's 4-dimensional space-time, whether 3+1 dimensions or 2+2 dimensions.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 02, @01:46PM (1 child)
The three dimensions of time approximating to
Imagine you are going down the express:
It is sort of like that
I described this in response to a secret military report that time had two dimensions.
Obviously, I cannot tell you which military, or I would have to kill you!
--
You are never alone with a cat burglar!
(Score: 4, Funny) by VLM on Wednesday July 02, @06:08PM
Its not so secret, I was in and there's at least two well known time-and-space warping effects mostly relating to higher rank. Each successive higher rank thinks privates should be 15 minutes earlier than the previous rank to formation, "the LT thinks you should be 15 minutes early to the 15 minutes early formation so we're all on time". Another one is the classic problem where the higher the rank, the more distorted from reality their space-time estimates are for troop movements and logistical supply. "Oh we announced the wrong location to meet for the division run, that's no problem we'll just walk across the base to the correct location nothing could possibly go wrong". There are also cryptic references to the older a military person is, the more they like "hurry up and wait" which obviously is a distortion of spacetime.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday July 02, @02:53PM (3 children)
https://xkcd.com/927/ [xkcd.com]
Or not.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Gaaark on Wednesday July 02, @09:07PM (2 children)
Tell that to a child being molested!
(Not to be argumentative or mean... just one of those 'religious things' that make me crazy.
My sister will quote "God never gives you more than you can handle", and i say, "Tell that to all the people who kill themselves".
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by Freeman on Thursday July 03, @03:32PM (1 child)
God may never give you more than you can handle. However, Satan will definitely give you more than you can handle. God will let you go your own way, but will also be there when you ask. "If God be for us, who can be against us?"
"20 For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. 21 What fruit did you have then in the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. 22 But now having been set free from sin, and having become slaves of God, you have your fruit [g]to holiness, and the end, everlasting life. 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the [h]gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."
We have the choice to be free of righteousness or free of sin. There is no other choice. Assuming you are free of righteousness, then you will not be protected by God. Thus, the saying "God will not give you more than you can handle" is not even wrong. That's assuming you're choosing to allow Him to help you.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Sunday July 06, @01:22PM
God is ALL POWERFUL!
Don't take the responsibility from him: A small, helpless child being molested is not Satan's fault, it is Gods. Satan may affect the molester, but the child is God's responsibility. I find your faith in God disturbing!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 02, @09:57PM
I think these guys have been watching too many of those superhero movies with multiple timelines. Please tell them the Terminator is not real
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Mojibake Tengu on Wednesday July 02, @11:40PM (1 child)
What is Energy?
Rust programming language offends both my Intelligence and my Spirit.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Thursday July 03, @06:36AM
Conjugate to time