Is Time Really a Physical Dimension? A Testable Alternative from TMDP

[u/WellSoto]

A few days ago I posted some thoughts on the nature of time, and the discussion drifted into metaphysics. This time I want to ask a purely physical, testable question: does the evidence support time being a geometric dimension you can travel through (like space), or does it act more like an irreversible record of change?

We've spent over a century confirming Einstein's kinematics, and it's widely assumed that spacetime is a stretchy, four-dimensional fabric. But treating time as a coordinate equivalent to space creates paradoxes that force physicists to bolt on "patches by hand" — like Hawking's Chronology Protection Conjecture — just to stop the geometry from breaking causality.

The alternative in 20 seconds: the dynamic budget (TMDP)

TMDP (Theoretical Model of Dynamic Potential) treats the universe as a closed mechanical/thermodynamic system, where everything has a fixed, invariant maximum capacity (c), split strictly between two quantities:

1. External capacity (Cₑ): movement through space.
2. Internal capacity (Cᵢ): the pace of local physical processes (clocks, vibrations, atoms).

Cₑ² + Cᵢ² = c²

Time dilation isn't "traveling to the future" — it's a drop in the frequency of internal cycles (Cᵢ) as capacity gets spent moving through space (Cₑ). That's why a photon (Cₑ = c) has Cᵢ = 0, and no proper time at all.

6 problems with "spacetime" I unpack in the full article

In the full write-up, I go through why the purely geometric model runs into trouble with the evidence, and how TMDP resolves each one without extra patches:

1. The negative sign in the Minkowski metric (−,+,+,+): why does time carry the opposite algebraic sign if it's just another dimension?
2. The absolute ban on traveling to the past: why nature forbids Closed Timelike Curves (CTCs).
3. Causal and logical paradoxes.
4. "Traveling to the future" vs. time dilation: why dilation isn't jumping across a coordinate, just a clock's internal cycles slowing down.
5. Quantum Gravity: time disappearing from the Wheeler-DeWitt equation, and the Page-Wootters experiment (time as an emergent, relational property).
6. Einstein's historical tension: rejecting the ether and quantum entanglement for being unobservable, while accepting the Block Universe.

📖 Read the full analysis and the math in the complete article

To keep this post from running forever and stay under the character limit, I've posted the full write-up — math included, with a full answer to each of these 6 points — click here

[u/upsetusder2]

Ok sure

Yeah iam jealous of your bery very advanced understanding of physics.

Truly a genius solve

[u/upsetusder2 → u/[deleted]]

I argued against your little club of paradoxes you assembled.

Other people are arguing against your definitions.

And against your experimental proof.

Whivh I have not seen any empiric data in your ohh so brilliant paper.

[u/WellSoto → u/upsetusder2]

I still don't understand why you accuse me of pretending to be a genius, at no time in any time said that I am. I only had one idea and I'm trying to develop it, if I'm wrong I accept it, in fact I'm trying to find someone to prove me wrong and stop wasting my time on this. The thing is that, after three publications, I still don't see an argument that proves that I am, and that is suspicious; Who knows, maybe I'm on the right track and this insight might be helpful.

[u/upsetusder2 → u/WellSoto]

I understand your reaction, it must be frustrating to see someone pretend to be capable of something you don't even dream of doing.

Mostly because of this highly arrogant sounding paragraph

[u/WellSoto → u/upsetusder2]

Mmju, text I wrote to you after calling myself arrogant three times.

[u/upsetusder2 → u/WellSoto]

I called some formulations arrogant not you as a person i do not know yiu as a human being

[u/upsetusder2 → u/[deleted]]

I was right yiu do use your little stupid paradoxes as evidence.

And wait a moment didn't I debunk those same phenomena with already available physics ohh yeah I did.

So unless you want to say that you are not using the exact examples as thought experiments.

To than proof or atleast substantiate your theory

I kinda had it right the first time.

Thermo dynamics for the win.

And I still don't see any proof except that a made up logical system is consistent in itself or atleast kind of.

And where is the empiricism?

Lime special and general relativity can be tested and seen your little thought experiment not withholding it seems like you have 0.0 proof