This is where you start getting into reality concepts and religous aspects of science. When was the beginning? When will be the end? I don't think there was a beginning the universe was just "there" and there will not be an end, it will just be "there". Even if the universe is destroyed by some kind of cosmic level disaster event, and nothing is left, there is still a universe, just an empty one :) Our universe (the 3rd dimension) cannot be destroyed, and time will always go forward constantly. Now this is where you begin to question the nature of our "universes", including all the dimensions.. we live in this set of dimensions on the 3rd, but what if.. what if this is not the only set of dimensions. Yes, let us say that the dimensions we live in (well, we reside in the 3rd, but we also reside in the 1st, 2nd, 4th, etc..) are only a set of dimensions in not only the whole universe, but a whole omniuniverse. Yes, what if there are other sets of whole dimensions, that are so radically different, that we couldn't even begin to comprehend. They reside in other places in this extremely spacious omniuniverse in which our whole universe (and all it's dimensions) take up just a little bit of space. Whoa, sorta got off topic a little bit :)

"For all things, there is a first time." –The character of Spock / Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Time exists to count against energy/matter. Energy/matter exists to be counted. So long as there is energy/matter, it will be counted. So long at there is time, there will be energy/matter. There are those who believe that time began at the onset of the Big Bang, but there was energy/matter before this, measuring far beyond Doctor Max Planck’s meager scale. Even with this in mind, however, and using Professor Isaac Asimov’s Baby Bang theory of infinite bangs occurring constantly throughout all time, energy/matter has always existed. Then there are the theories of Bubble Universes, or universes within universes, where all matter of a knowable universe is contained within an expanding, impenetrable, undetectable shield of non-matter. An infinite number of Bubble Universes are theoretically formed during a Big Bang event, and, as such, this infinite number of Bubble Universes would be infinitely multiplied in Professor Asimov’s theory. Where did it all begin? It didn’t. Where will it all end? It won’t.

Everything as we know it has a beginning and an end. So, from our aspect, there is a beginning and an end to time. From God or whatever higher being you believe in, there's no time. In the other realm, so to speak, time is not time.

I think there is a beginning. It was initiated by God. He will also cease time if it is His will.

There is really no way to tell how large a second would be. It’s rather like comparing apples and Sherman tanks. I have a cube that’s eight inches, by eight inches, by eight inches, and will last eight seconds. Would this be equitable, or could it also read as eight hours? --Eight months? --Years? I’m not finding a correlation here, Eric. I’m afraid that this particular question is incalculable.

That would depend on whether you consider a second to be 1:a unit of distance, 2: a measure of time in 1 or 2 dimensions I think a second would probably be 4 seconds in 4d.

Probably about 17 inches or so. Just kidding. Maybe one Light-second?

I say it would be around the distance that light travels in a second. We seem to base everything else on light (even the length of a meter is based on how far light travels in a certain fraction of a second!!), so I guess it would be that.

I would like to think that if the 4th dimension is time and it is measurable with distance that one second could be equal to a very large measurement such as the diameter of our galaxy. I would think that these distances would be large to fit all the layers of time in. Which is not to say I think the fourth dimensinon is time... because I don't feel that way!

I think that if ever placed in a position that you were in danger then there is some kind of intervention that tells you that is beyond your normal 5 senses. It is kind of like survival of the fittest and if you pay attention to your senses then you will know if you're ever in danger.

Intrinsically, no. There is no hard evidence that says we do and hard evidence is what I live for. Our senses do, however, have the ability to combine their resources to make it appear that we have more. For instance, "I can tell what’s on your mind." What this implies is a kind of telepathic ability, but what we actually encounter are the senses of sight, smell, and hearing combining to form a complete, though sometimes incorrect, picture. The way your mind can immediately decipher the subliminal body language (the way a person stands, sits, places their hands, looks at you), tone of voice, and yes even barely perceptible odors, of another person is all too often explained away as a kind of intuition. Even the ability to foretell the future falls short. You may be able to derive what a person may or may not do in a given situation, but these results begin the skew the further you try to look. The reason? A little thing called "changing environment". The person’s area or attitude changes, resulting now in a different set of responses. Foretelling the future events of a community are much easier. In this, what we’re dealing with is a kind of herd instinct. Community responses are much slower to change and so the predictions are much easier to make. Then there are those who state that they had an "out-of- body" experience. There is no way to actually record such an event, so there is, again, no hard evidence on way or the other. "I had a dream last night that the plane was going to crash and it did." If you don’t like to fly and a loved-one takes a flight, would it be considered normal to have such a dream? If the plane did crash, could it be thought of as a premonition? Yes to both. Again, no hard evidence. If there are more than the five senses, I think I was shortchanged.

I think there is a great possibility of us having another "subtle" sense that most of us don't use to a great extent, or use without thinking about it. Some blind people can walk around and if a tree branch is in front of them, they can "sense" it by some of their muscles in the face, but it's not touch. And they can avoid the branch. Now is that another sense? We don't know, there could be a numerous amount of different senses, most probably heightened by the loss of another sense like sight or hearing. I also think there is another sense that's sorta like a spirit sense, for example some people have felt a rush when one of their close relatives are in great pain.. thereby warning them of their predicament. There are a lot of senses out there, but the main ones are the 5 we use the most.. but that doesn't mean there are only 5.

I think we have other senses. Just because the things we detect with our basic 5 senses are physical, that does not mean there is nothing else we can "feel". I imagine it would have something to do with spirituality and/or the mind.

A true quote of Murphy’s First Law includes the later-added qualifier: "and at the worst possible moment", but I would have to say that most problems can be avoided by utilizing Fife’s Axiom: "Nip it in the bud!" Of course, Murphy has this covered as well in his Second Law: "Nothing is as easy as it looks." The objective is to find the initial trouble and start from the ground up. This sounds good and works out on paper, but if you’ve ever bought a used car, you probably know that it’s easier to simply buy another car. Our social problems, however, cannot be handled in this manner. It’s far to costly to toss a spouse away Ex-friends invariably turn up again (usually at the most inopportune moments and always with some kind of additional trouble) Employment associates criticize you no matter what your level is or how long you’ve been with the company. What needs to be done is what the military calls a regular PM (Preventive Maintenance) of everything that effects you and your life. This doesn’t have to be a daily occurrence either. Once you have your current affairs in order, it’s a relatively easy matter of controlling new variables. You could keep a simple thought that comes to mind with each new event you encounter. "Is this going to hurt?" If you can answer "Yes", then this may be something to either avoid or correct (both as soon as possible). And let us not forget Hubbard’s Law: "Don’t take life too seriously you won’t get out of it alive."

Given an infinite time frame, everything that can possibly occur will occur, no matter how small the probability. A corollary (or a sort of subset) to that is Murphy's Law. Another corollary would be "everything that can go right will go right" (call it Eric's Law). An interesting result pops up because of the infinite time/ probability theory. Two things must be covered first:

1) given a frame with no external forces acting upon it, if
that frame returns to a state in which that frame has been
before, that frame will undergo the exact same sequence of
events until it returns to that state again and again forever.
Think of a ball bouncing between two walls with nothing to
stop it, slow it, or alter it's path.

2) some say (mistakenly) that the Earth is a closed system.
The only closed system in the entire universe is the universe
itself (we think, but it can't really be proven).  Add in the
infinite time theory and we can see that the probabilty of our
closed system (frame) returning to a state in which it has
been before is 100%, no matter how small the probability.

It is not at all incorrect to say we have lived our lives
countless times before, doing the exact same thing, and will
continue to do so forever.  For one, I don't buy it, but it's
intersting to think about nonetheless.  It doesn't have any
holes to shoot it down with.

I think that to a sertan extent it is true, but that the results are beeing influensed by the human mind. If you are looking for a sertan result you are more likely to find it. This result looks fine, but they are not independent. I have been doing some reserch on the subjekt and I have been studying the results. The resulst always match with the results the reserchers wants.

I think that it could go either way. If something does go wrong it usually does so for a reason but if that reason can't be identified then Murphy's Law becomes a universal excuse.

I have had terrible "luck" the past day or so and I thought this was an appropriate topic. I think that problems seem to be so profuse because they are the things in our memory that stand out making us believe that only bad things happen to us.

Evolutionally speaking, we were at one time just a herd of lowly primates sitting up in a tree, picking mites from our neighbor’s back and occasionally biting a troublemaker or two. Now look at us. We shoot people who cut us off in traffic, we bomb whole countries if they don’t do what we say, we rape young children, we have the nuclear capability to destroy all life on this planet several times over, we pollute our water tables and runoffs, we have children who kill their parents and parents who kill their children . . . People, we have so much potential for good that it makes me sick to see the waste! We don’t talk to our neighbors because we don’t really know them, we don’t help our schools because we don’t really know the teachers, we don’t vote because we don’t know the issues . . . So get to know them. What we have over the animal kingdom is the ability to ensure that they won’t outlive us—unless of course it’s a cockroach. Not good enough! Do you want a reality-check? How about this one? On a blank sheet of paper, draw a two inch circle with a number 2 pencil. The width of that line will represent the crust of the Earth. All the white in the middle is liquid, superheated, molten magma . . . And you’re worried about the guy that just cut you off?! It’s time we cleaned up our act, folks. It’s time we proved to ourselves and those around us that we are the most intelligent creatures in the known universe. It’s time to help those less fortunate. You don’t even have to ever see them if you don’t want to, but the helping hand does reach. It reaches in the form of coffee with the neighbor, supporting school-aid, voting NOT for the politician or the kickback, but for the issue and what you know is right. Take care of your environment and it’ll take care of you. If the world were to end tomorrow, would you be satisfied with your contributions? Could you say that you had done all you could? Could you say that you made a difference? The universe is an environment of endless possibility. Contact with intelligent life forms not of this Earth remains an acute possibility. When this finally does occur, and believe me it will, how will we be judged? How will YOU be judged?

No, to say that we are the smartest beings in the universe is so selfishly self-centered, it makes me wanna puke. There could have been intelligent life over 800 million years ago, in a second generation star system, like ours. Intelligence and sentience arenot confined to those creatures who evolve in some crappy galaxy, in a crappy system, in the tiniest most pathetic nook... it can evolve on any of the theorized 7 septillion planets out there(most being gas, but still). besides, if we were, that would suck royally, there'd be no one else to play with :(

I think this is an enormously simplistic view. We can't even prove the consciousness (much less intelligence) of other humans, so how can we disprove it in most other animals? Further, we must keep in mind that there are gradations. It is not Homo "sapiens" vs. the "dumb" animals Intelligence / Consciousness lie on a continuum. Yes, we lie closer to one end and a planarium lies closer to the other, but most vertebrates possess as much or greater intelligence than many humans. Compare the learning abilities of a dog and an idiot (a technical term for someone with a low IQ). So, to answer your question, humans don't have an *enormous* *advantage* but they do have *some more* of a *certain type* of intelligence. ("Enormous" is a subjective term, not to mention "advantage".) I assume any life discovered off this planet would also display greater and lesser degrees of this ability-to-learn-certain-things. I assume that most, like most on earth, would have "less" than humans. But I assume that some, like some on earth, would be smarter than I am, and therefore extrapolate that to superior intelligence could exist.

fractal of imagination..created as a scapegoat..thoughts and actions are never thouroughly examined when things "go correctly"...precise response algorithm of the brain to account for a deemed mistake...excuse for penance...yadda yadda yadda...

I think humans are suuperior relative to organisms on this planet. Nobody knows what is out. I guess I will ask Nobody himself and find out. It would be nice to know we are a great race but I think it is already obvious we aren't.

I have been with the Earth/Jessup Task force since the beginning of the Chit-Chit-Kunak War and have found it rather interesting that the Mit-Ro-Don who have allied themselves with us are actually no more intelligent that we Earthers in many respects. It appears the fact that they are more advanced than we is merely the outcome of luck more than anything else. There were no grand crusades or inquisitions in their history to stunt their growth and so they are technologically centuries ahead of us. The other day, my mentor and supervisor, Squadron Leader Trag, and I were just bouncing ideas off one another and it occurred to me that time travel, the actual transfer of matter from "today" to "yesterday" could be possible if you were to simply step "between time". We were just sitting on the floor of the launch bay beside the Falcon II, my Goldstream Fighter, taking various analog and digital measurements of her laser array, when a question of timing came up. One of the problems we had encountered was a minor overload in my right plasma deflector and stabilizer. I powered down my cutting screen and we found that there was indeed a timing slip in my power feed. Well, I was just sitting there and watching the o’scope display of those sharp square waves when I thought about the timing of the universe. What if we could cause a slip in universal timing? Oh, nothing drastic, just localized to say the area of a small room. Trag agreed that this was a very valid theory and one that his people had been puzzling over for the past few hundred years, but there appeared to be no answer in sight. He went on to explain that the faster than light drive on my Falcon II was is an example of time travel, but always in a forward motion. The faster you travel, the slower your area of influence ages, but always in fractions. You could never travel fast enough to completely stop or reverse the flow of Time. He said that FTL does indeed bend the rules of physics, but by no means does it defeat them. We still remain prisoners trapped within the deteriorating cells of our temporal existence. Happy birthday!

Aliens would only help if they had better dimensional theories than we do. I suspect that they would have to considering the vast ammount of space they would have to cross to reach us. They would have to have either hyperspace travel or FTL travel, (which needs hyperspace, ask me if you doubt) to reach us in any meaningful time lapse.

Gee, Eric, I really like questions about English. Let’s see. I wasn’t really aware that the existence or non-existence of non-Americans had any effect on our studies into temporal-physics one way or the other. Just kidding! But again, I don’t see where the existence of extraterrestrial aliens would have any effect on our studies into temporal-physics one way or the other. It is a forgone fact that there are alien beings in this vast, totally unexplored by mankind universe. The Hubble telescope reveals thousands of new galaxies every month. How can we possibly be alone? Oh, if only Dr. Sagan were still with us today! Proof of life on other planets shall remain an utter impossibility for much of the coming century. If we could only derive some vision of just how vast this galaxy, this very universe is! But, sadly, the mind of man remains limited in this respect. We think in two dimensional patterns, concerned so much with distance and deflection, but no regard for elevation. Our eyes are fixed on the horizon, when all we need do is tilt back and view the great lens of the Milky Way. Proof of alien life shall have to remain academic for the next century, but when we do finally meet, then perhaps there will be a change in fourth dimensional studies—for they may be the ones to supply us with so many answers, which will doubtless open new fields of exploration and study. Dan

There would be different effects depending on how we got the proof of the existence of aliens: If aliens actually come to earth and meet us, and they tell us all the fantastic secrets not yet known about Time and Space and Dimension, then our scientists would have to play a game of catch-up. It would be like we had this very difficult problem that we weren't even close to solving, and someone comes along and tells us the answer is, say, "4". (Aside: would 42 be more appropriate?) So now we know there is an answer to this complex problem, and we have to scramble to fill in all myriad steps between the problem and the answer. If we find existence of aliens by unearthing a crashed ship (or somethin like that) then we would know that some aspect of Space-Time curvature, or hyperspace, or black hole propulsion (ha!), etc., could be utilized to traverse the vastness of the Cosmos in a reasonable amount of time. This would probably cause a merger between experts in multi-dimensional physics and NASA scientists, and this push us into fascinating, fun, and previously unexplored areas of science. If we discover aliens via a radio transmission, and all they say is "hello," then we would need to find ways in which we could use Hyper- dimensional shortcuts that would allow our return message to travel the vast distances between civilizations, without taking the thousands of years it would normally take at "mere" light-speed. At any rate, it would change things quite a lot, I think. Because if we did find proof of aliens, they would probably be more advanced than us. This would give the human race a big inferiority complex because we would no longer be the most knowledgable race in our universe, so science would definitely get a huge thrust foward, if only to save face!

Firstly, let us assume ,for the purpose of this argument, that proof of the existence of aliens denotes a first contact. This event would (not neccessarily) connote a knowledge of the 4th spatial dimension, and perhaps a unified physics in the fourth dimension. Currently, unexplained phenomenon of the so-called Z variety of quantum mechanics may be validated. Permission of this type of travel for aliens beings would suggest a practical knowledge of the 4th spacial dimension, previously unallowed under the current laws of physics. Perhaps knowledge of the fourth dimension will demand an entire overhaul of the axiomatic proposals of this universe, creating a (sorry for the pun) 'wormhole' for physical and mathematical ideals. In a statement, alien beings and the fourth dimension seem to be intrinsically linked.

Eric, I think you're on to something in your response. However, I'd like to qualify it a little bit. First, proof of the existence of aliens may not include CONTACT with them exactly, just observing them or seeing a crashed space craft or something. And if we DID have contact with aliens, who's to say they're more advanced than we are? Or it could be like on Star Trek -- the "Prime Directive" does not allow superior races to share technology with more "primitive" races, because it could adversely affect them. (Imagine giving Cave Men an automobile or a machine gun!) But if we did encounter "friendly" aliens with superior intelligence, (I don't believe superior intelligence automatically implies "nice"), maybe they would have a better grasp on science and would be able to tell us more about the Fourth Dimension -- if they were willing to tell us, that is. Maybe they use the Fourth Dimension for their "Hyperdrive" -- traveling through 4-D to get from place to place faster. Maybe they could help us with any number of things. Who knows?

This is a weird topic... Anyway, I think that if aliens were here, we would learn about advanced forms of science and thus the fourth dimension from them.