I got excited that the paper makes concrete predictions for particle masses - the electron, muon, and tau, the quarks, and the neutrinos. For the moment, particle masses are free parameters in the Standard Model that you need to plug arbitrary experimentally-derived numbers into. A theory that can calculate them directly would be a great theory, even if it were as weird as having 3 time dimensions.

Buuut... this paper doesn't actually explain how it calculates all its amazing predictions. It just starts with something like "what if Schrödinger equation, but instead of exp(it) we had exp(it1 + it2 + it3)!" And I agree: yes! Let's! What if! We should explore all possibilities, no matter how weird, if they lead to better understanding of the world. But then it immediately goes to say "let α and γ be some [unspecified] constants. Therefore the mass of the muon is 105.6583745 MeV". Like... how?

I thought maybe this is a paper just to announce the theory, and all the laborious calculations are in the supplemental materials, but at the very bottom it specifically writes "Data Availability: The theoretical predictions and numerical calculations presented in this paper are fully described within the text." **Frodo mode:** Fine, keep you secrets!

Until the author shows the actual theory and the calculations outputting all these amazing predictions, they are no more useful than that LinkedIn post that said "what if e = mc2 but e = mc2 + AI"

[–] AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world 15 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

The Time Cube guy was right all along!

[–] Boddhisatva@lemmy.world 3 points 9 hours ago

Maybe. Trump would hire him in a heartbeat. He's probably working at NASA now.

[–] pcouy@lemmy.pierre-couy.fr 6 points 10 hours ago (2 children)

How reliable is this website ? I see clickbaity headlines from it all the time around here and the Wikipedia page is mostly empty

[–] AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world 8 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) (1 children)

To its credit, the article does include a pretty thorough disclaimer:

Editor's note (6/24/2025): While Kletetschka's theory of three-dimensional time presents an intriguing new framework, its results have not yet been accepted by the broader scientific community. The theory is still in the early stages of scrutiny and has not been published in leading physics journals or independently verified through experiments or peer-reviewed replication. Publishing in Reports in Advances of Physical Sciences (World Scientific Publishing), while a legitimate step, is not sufficient for a theory making such bold claims. This journal is relatively low-impact and niche, and its peer review does not match the rigorous scrutiny applied by top-tier journals like Physical Review Letters or Nature Physics. For a paradigm-shifting idea to gain acceptance, it must withstand critical evaluation by the wider physics community, be published in highly regarded journals, and provide reproducible predictions that align with existing evidence—standards this work has not yet met.

[–] pcouy@lemmy.pierre-couy.fr 1 points 53 minutes ago* (last edited 46 minutes ago) (1 children)

I'm not seeing this editor's note (at least on mobile). Where is it ?

Edit 2: never mind, found it

[–] AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world 2 points 49 minutes ago (1 children)

It’s at the very end of the (desktop) article, immediately following the paragraph

"The path to unification might require fundamentally reconsidering the nature of physical reality itself," he said. "This theory demonstrates how viewing time as three-dimensional can naturally resolve multiple physics puzzles through a single coherent mathematical framework."

[–] pcouy@lemmy.pierre-couy.fr 1 points 45 minutes ago (1 children)

Found it thanks

Why did they burry what's arguably the most important piece of information at the very end though ?

[–] AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world 1 points 23 minutes ago

The “editor’s note” indicates that it’s not part of the original article—it would be misleading to insert it in the middle of the article if it wasn’t written by the attributed author.

[–] DickFiasco@sh.itjust.works 3 points 9 hours ago

I don't know, but the thumbnail for this article looks like some AI nonsense.

[–] Remember_the_tooth@lemmy.world 3 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

He writes that his mathematical framework for three-dimensional time improves on others' proposals by making testable reproductions of known particle masses and other physical properties.

Awesome. Test results or GTFO.

[–] TowardsTheFuture@lemmy.zip 4 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

I believe from when I read it the other day they’ve got their calculations and they should be testable in a few years (new colliders or whatever else that are being built currently should be able to confirm their calculations)

[–] Remember_the_tooth@lemmy.world 2 points 8 hours ago

Thanks for adding context. I won't bother setting an alert for this, though. If correct, this will revolutionize physics on a scale not seen since relativity. It will be the forefront of global news.

[–] TachyonTele@piefed.social 2 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

I've been waiting to see if anyone picks up on this, one way or the other. Much like Wolfram's theories it's a really neat concept. Time will tell if it's able to actually be verifiable in our dimension.

[–] bizarroland@lemmy.world 2 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

I know this is wrong, but when I think about time and dimensions, I think of the fourth dimension being like our physical first dimension, and the fifth like our second and the sixth like our third.

So the moment now that you are in would be the sum of all of your first, second, and third dimensions currently in the fourth dimension, and then the fifth dimension would be the sum of everything you are from the moment you are born to the moment you die, all of your fourth dimension movements making like a wibbly wobbly, timey, wimey thing, and then the sixth dimension would be all the potential times of all of the lives and experiences that ever exist.

Like I said, I know this is wrong, but this is what I enjoy thinking about.

[–] 474D@lemmy.world 2 points 6 hours ago

I like to think of it geometrically. Like 1st dimension is a line, 2nd dimension is a flat map, 3rd dimension is like a globe model of the earth, 4th dimension would be that globe changing. Probably also not totally accurate but I like it

[–] Remember_the_tooth@lemmy.world 0 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

Edit: Replied at wrong level again. Downvoted self out of shame.