Expert: Steve Nelson - 3/27/2010

Question
The best way I can think to ask my question is to start with a
thought experiment.  Imagine you are on top of a train traveling
through time, instead of through a physical dimension of space.  You
are traveling away from the past and toward the future, at some
unknown velocity through time. You have a bird in a cage sitting by
you on top of the train, also moving at the same unknown velocity.
You are in front of the bird relative to the velocity of the train,
and you are recording the birds chirping.  The sound has to travel
through the time, from the bird to the recorder, and since you, the
bird, and the recorder are all moving through the time, there is a
Doppler shift causing the chirps to sound lower in pitch than they
actually are.  When you play back your recording the sound has to travel through the time from the recorder to you, so it sounds lower in pitch than what you heard when you made the recording.  Your theoretical recordings of the birds chirps will always sound lower when played back than when you listen the the actual bird.  My question is whether or not the measurements and recordings we make of the universe are skewed in a similar way because of our movement through time?  It seems that because all measurements are of past events which are moving away from us through time, that any model which fits those events, would necessarily not fit exactly with future events which are moving towards us through time.

Answer
Let me stop you at the word "recording."  You're traveling through time, not space, yes?  Then you're at the same point in time as the bird, so the bird and you are stuck at the same point in time and there is no singing unless you consider a 5th dimension of "real time" where there's some kind of Galilean time going on.  You're talking about the sound traveling through time, but the word traveling implies some distance in time divided by some other time for a velocity...i.e. not possible.  Your understanding of relativity is flawed in your notion of traveling through time, because that implies a fifth timelike dimension.