Assume two-dimensional time. A person can go forward or backward, left or right, diagonal. For simplicity, let's assume they can only move in right angles. Okay, if I move North in time, that's what people nowadays consider 'forward.' Then, if I move East, nothing I do eastward can affect anything Northward. I'm not going North. So if I spend 'time' going East, it doesn't count toward 'real' time going North.

So if I spent 6,000 years going East in time and reached something 400 lightyears away, and then turned North, would I have travelled instantaneously?

There are some obvious flaws. First, there's the 'flatland' argument. Flatman lives in flatland and a sphere moves through his world. To him, it looks like a point expanding to a curved line, shrinking back to a point. This works if I am assuming that we live in a virtual time Flatland. But Flatman cannot jump off his world. Up does not exist for him. It is irrelevant that it exists outside of his reference.

So, even if there were sideways time in another, alternate universe, we have not encountered it so that means it does not exist in ours. Right? So I can't use this and make it feel believeable?

Other flaw/question: time, distance, and velocity are closely linked. If I were to travel through space in a different direction of time, how would that affect my spacial movement? Or can one travel only in time if one travels in a direction other than North?

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Then, if I move East, nothing I do eastward can affect anything Northward. I'm not going North. So if I spend 'time' going East, it doesn't count toward 'real' time going North....So if I spent 6,000 years going East in time and reached something 400 lightyears away....

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This seems to involve a contradiction. No matter how far you travel in time, that doesn't necessarily involve travel in space. You demonstrate that you theoretically understand this point, but then you ignore it by saying that traveling 6,000 years in time might send you 400 lightyears in space.

Dimensions are tricky things. I don't think that you can postulate that there is a second dimension of time anymore than you can postulate that there is a fourth spatial dimension. In fact, since we know that there are at least three orthagonal but continuous dimensions of space, extra dimensions of space seem much more plausible than another orthagonal dimension continuous with time. What if the dimension orthagonally continuous with time is mass?

Mass, by the way, or rather energy density (which is the same thing for any defined volume proceeding to the asymptote of a point of volume), is a dimensional characteristic of every point in space. So are the three spatial dimensions, time (for any event-point), three vectors of what you might call slope (the directions in which energy density displays propagation) and some other things that can't be so easily explained (although there is a lot of persuasive math about them). Right now, there is just no room for another dimension that has no evidence or even coherent theory to suggest its existence.

Anyway, chaos theory demonstrates that there are flaws in our popular conceptions about entropy, i.e. just because "heat death" occurs in a system doesn't mean that the entropy of the system is complete, since unless a system is in stasis, the possibility of previously undetectable "information" becoming apparent cannot be excluded. A good (or bad, depending on your point of view) example of this type of phenomenon is what is known as a "hole in the sea" or its counterpart, known variously as a perfect, sudden, or other kind of wave. What can happen (in theory and in fact, as it turns out) is that various waves, all moving in different directions at different speeds, can all constructively interfere at the same time, causing a giant hole in the sea that can swallow and sink a ship pretty much instantly, or a sudden wave that can tower suddenly out of nowhere and swamp a ship badly.

Entropy theory as popularly applied is based on the idea that once information is no longer apparent in a system, that information is gone. Actually, this is not a logical consequence of the theory of Entropy, and turns out not to be an actual result either. For this reason, there is not a 'slope' that entropy runs down. Therefore moving orthagonal to time would not necessarily entail perceptable alterations in the laws of entropy as we know them.

The people from the future, who traveled into the past and changed it, still exist despite the fact that their future, which once DID exist, no longer does. Further, they find evidence that people have changed the course of history in times previous . . . or rather in the future, but in a future which was replaced by the one they came from, which was replaced by the one they just created.

So . . . in a strictly 1 dimensional sense of time . . . they never existed. If, however, you think of time as a plane made up of these one-dimensional time-flows, you have a kind of two-dimensional time.

Now . . . travelling sideways in time based on this picture would depend on how each time-flow line is defined within the time-plane. And here I'm beginning to get in over my head.

If you moved sideways in time . . . e.g. you stay perpetually in December 19, 2007 8:57:33 PM, but you slide 'across' the various time flows, you'd get one of two interesting effects.

1) If each time flow is a discrete line on the time-plane . . . much like toothpicks smashed side to side on a table . . . the world would flicker so fast you couldn't possibly comprehend it all. You would see variations of all possible histories, much like the idea of parallel universes, but you'd be flicking through them at such speed it would quite literally drive you insane.

2) If the time-plane is a smooth continuum of time-flows which all run together in some grand 'shape' of time, the world would seem animated around you, but in a very strange way. For example, at point A in time. 7:30 AM on the day of your choice, Bob goes out jogging, and you decide to 'pause' time. Everything's frozen. Now, you slide slowly sideways, just a bit. You're now in a time-flow where Bob left 1/10th of a second later for his morning jog . . . thus his foot will not quite have hit the ground. As you continue to move 'sideways' Bob will also appear to move, though not in any pattern you'd recognize, because you're cycling through a gradually-changing 'shape' of time in which exists a plethora of different choices that Bob could have made, from leaving earlier, to later, to taking a different route, to whatever, but because each time-flow is not a discrete line in our time-plane, but simply a line, as you 'slide' sideways, Bob's alternate decisions will make him move in what appears to be a 'smooth' motion . . . which by the way, will have no relation whatsoever to physical laws. :-) Confusing enough.

That's how I picture it at least. So . . . now for a question.

Your observer is 'sliding' sideways through time . . . forever paused in the same moment. Theoretically, if that's the case, he'd be able to just 'pause' time and sit there if he wanted . . . yet time is passing for him. Wouldn't that imply a third dimension of time? :-)

Let THAT boggle your mind!

And if I moved North from the eggplant possibility, my friend would remain an eggplant, and probably lots of other unlikely things would happen in that sort of time.

Besides which, I didn't move at all in space, and it doesn't help me to have an eggplant for a friend. Although, with these rules, there still might be some possibilities for postulation (and maybe stories).