Are there any cosmological models of time and space that consider time to be a dimension that moves in more than one direction? In other words the past, the present, and the future all already “exist” and your being in the present is simply a function of your perspective.
Some people like to apply the philosophy of ‘block time’ to the theory of relatvity.
I can’t really speak about cosmological models, but what you’re describing sounds like the B-Theory of Time. You may find this wiki article of interest:
Go search on “block universe.”
If all past and future worldlines are static and determined, then the universe is like a vinyl record album sitting on a shelf. All moments already exist. It’s like a solid four-dimensional block, with “the present” being a ‘plane’ which slices it into two parts: past and future.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternalism_%28philosophy_of_time%29
Block Universe has problems mentioned in WP. My favorite: if the universe is like a vinyl record, then why is there a “present?” Everything just …is. So what laws of physics created a past and future? Why does there have to be a “needle” that “plays” the record?
Ah grasshoppah, the universe is just a self-knitting Doctor Who Scarf, and you are nothing but a long trail of gunpowder in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. It’s an arcade game of Asteroids, and would be totally deterministic if it weren’t for vast pan-dimensional beings constantly mashing the buttons. The Cosmic Domino Setter Upper simply had to knock one over by accident, then (she?) gets to watch and be entertained.
There isn’t. The slice of “you” at the time coordinate June 6, 2011 has correlations with events in its proper past that correspond to what we call “memories”, and the the slice of “you” at the time coordinate June 7, 2011 has correlations with a slightly larger set of events. Some of those correlations are with the previous slice of “you”, and are of a form that we consider to constitute continuity. But it’s not that the phonograph needle of “now” plays one time and then another time and then another time: All of the “nows” have equal validity.
This question was already answered next week.
So it goes.
Your question will be answered yesterday.
when i was young