“Raum und Zeit” Centennial

I was writing an essay about Time for my Comm I class when I first met Minkowski. Of course, that time I just filtered out the descriptive portion of the topic and totally ignored the mathematical aspect. After submitting the paper (I got 1.75), I completely forgot the whole thing about him and his concept of spacetime. I met him again when I studied Special and General relativity. This was the time when I knew how to differentiate Euclidean space from Minkowski spacetime. This was the time when I recognized his importance in Physics.


As I went through my usual online routine this morning, I found out that last Sunday (September 21, 2008) was the Spacetime centennial. It was the 100 years of the introduction of spacetime in our mathematics. It was the 100 years celebration of the birth of spacetime concept. Without spacetime, I am not sure how we are going to define relativity, specifically general relativity in our physics.

Coincidentally, last week I was thinking about the Space (Spatial) Age of man. I am not referring here to the age when man started to explore the space (the vast space beyond earth). But instead I am referring to the period when man started to study space per se and explored its importance in his life and the universe that surrounds him. When I say space, I am referring to the topological, mathematical, real, actual, and virtual space.

The whole week last week, as part of my personal review modules, I was planning to read and write about the historical development of Space. I was contemplating on the start point and the future end point of our Space (Spatial) Era. I was thinking of charting this historical development and projecting the estimated height of this era. Right now, I can say we are only in the childhood age of Spatial Era.

What do we mean by Spatial Era here? Let me give you this rough definition. Spatial Era is the period when man studied and explored the concept of universal space: mathematical, physical and even virtual space. So, what am I trying to do here? I am trying to map out the curve of this historical development. Once I have mapped out the normal curve of Spatial Era, we can start mapping out (and projecting) the historical curve of our Temporal Era (the time when we started to study the concept of universal time – mathematical, physical and virtual time).

Simply, I just want to introduce these concepts of Spatial Era and Temporal Era to distinguish the periods of our knowledge.

As I mentioned earlier, we are only on the childhood period of Spatial Era. We are just starting to have a good grasp of the concept of space, beginning to apply its concept in our lives. Look around you, everything is about space. In physics, physicists are battling over the properties of the basic fabric of our spacetime, and we introduce the structure of space through differential geometry and physical topology. In math, we have a long list of spaces, Abelian, Hilbert, Boolean, etc… Each time you define something in math you have to define it within the context of its space. In real life, we explore the concept of space, maximizing the functional use of space, vertical and horizontal assembly line, flyovers and overpasses, and many other engineering and structural designs giving a maximum utilization of space. In architecture and art, we create things in relation to space. We have the Functional School, the Minimalist School, and many other schools presenting ideas based on space. In astronomy, we build huge eyes to peer on the vastness of the universe, viewing the deep corners of our universe. Nowadays, the number of people who are dependent on the internet is expanding exponentially. This one is also about space, virtual space. We created an imaginary space in our machines where we materialize our imaginary life (virtual life to be exact).

Maybe when we reach the adult period of our Spatial Era, we are already exploiting the subspace technology. We already know how to bend space and travel through its vastness in shorter time.

Temporal Era, I am not sure yet about this, but I believe we are already in the spermatozoan stage. We have already studies on chronons and the concept of time as a mathematical and physical entity. The height of it is maybe having Temporal Guards like the ones on Star Trek Enterprise.

Back to Minkowski, he is very important to our current understanding of physics. Everything, all physical properties, is expressed in spacetime coordinate. If you are familiar with x,y,z, t then you know Minkowski.

** Note: I will be exploring the history of Space and Spacetime soon here in my blog. I want to write more about these concepts.