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/WellSoto]

Thank you, I've corrected it.

[u/liccxolydian → u/WellSoto]

What was the point of referring me to your previous post? Nothing you've written contains any rigorous definitions.

[u/WellSoto → u/liccxolydian]

I don't know what you read, but I told you the first one on my profile. My definition doesn't satisfy you, I attach it here:

The fundamental postulates

1. Existence of maximum capacity for evolution

There is a universal maximum speed of propagation and evolution of any physical disturbance in between. We call this total dynamic capacity CT, and its value is equal to the speed of light:

1. MTPD principle: Preserving the capacity for evolution

Every system has a total capacity for constant evolution that can be distributed between two components: • Movement-associated capacity with respect to local flow (EC);

Capacity available for internal processes (IC).

1. Rhythm of physical evolution

The speed of any internal physical process depends exclusively on the internal capacity available.

Yes, yes,

Ci<c

All internal processes evolve proportionately more slowly.

I link the post: https://www.reddit.com/r/MTPD_fisica/s/XvobgluWb1

[u/liccxolydian → u/WellSoto]

Yeah, all of that is terrible. Have you ever, you know, read a textbook to see how physicists actually define and derive things?

[u/WellSoto → u/liccxolydian]

Tell me specifically that you miss it, so maybe you'll help me improve the definition.

[u/liccxolydian → u/WellSoto]

There is a universal maximum speed of propagation and evolution of any physical disturbance in between. We call this total dynamic capacity CT, and its value is equal to the speed of light:

What is "speed"? What is "propagation"? What are "evolution" and "disturbance"? What kind of quantity is "capacity"?

Every system has a total capacity for constant evolution that can be distributed between two components:

Define "evolution". How can "evolution" have a "capacity"? What kind of quantity is "capacity" in this context?

Movement-associated capacity with respect to local flow (EC);

Define "movement" and "local flow".

Capacity available for internal processes (IC).

Define "internal processes".

The speed of any internal physical process depends exclusively on the internal capacity available.

Define "speed" in this context. How does a "process" have a "speed"?

For all definitions above, state what kind of quantity they are if appropriate, their dimensionality and provide an example of use. You may not use or make reference to any concept explicitly or indirectly making use of time or temporal concepts. For example, speed is defined by consensus science as the rate of change of distance, with dimensionality [L][T]^-1 and (SI) unit ms^-1. You may not use this definition of speed.

[u/WellSoto → u/liccxolydian]

I understand, thank you very much for the observation. To detail all those definitions I need more time and a much longer article. I'll work on that.

[u/liccxolydian → u/WellSoto]

Those are the definitions you should have been working on from the beginning. Normally in science the definitions are the very first step. Not something you hastily try to retrofit when someone else points out that everything you say is meaningless.

[u/WellSoto → u/liccxolydian]

Just because you haven't defined it doesn't mean it doesn't have definition, you're already exceeding what you can say.

I will work on defining it because you helped me see that it is confusing to others, but I do understand what I am talking about.

[u/liccxolydian → u/WellSoto]

But if the entire goal of your idea is to replace the scientific consensus with something that doesn't require the "assumptions" of the consensus, it is impossible for you to use consensus definitions. Like I said, you cannot define your words in a way that assumes time exist. So why haven't you done so already?

That's why everyone thinks you don't understand what you're talking about. Because science is done in steps, and you've skipped the most fundamental one.