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"I always thought it was time, but I've been informed that space/time composes part of the third dimension" Nope

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EINSTEIN/MINKOWSKI

In 1952, in his book Relativity, in discussing Minkowski's Space World interpretation of his theory of relativity, Einstein writes:"Since there exists in this four dimensional structure [spacetime] no longer any sections which represent "now" objectively, the concepts of happening and becoming are indeed not completely suspended, but yet complicated. It appears therefore more natural to think of physical reality as a four dimensional existence, instead of, as hitherto, the evolution of a three dimensional existence"

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The term spacetime has taken on a generalized meaning beyond treating spacetime events with the normal 3+1 dimensions. It is really the combination of space AND time

Other proposed spacetime theories include additional dimensions—normally spatial but there exist some speculative theories that include additional temporal (time) dimensions & even some that include dimensions that are neither temporal nor spatial

How many dimensions are needed to describe the universe is still an open question. Speculative theories such as string theory predict 10 or 26 dimensions (with M-theory predicting 11 dimensions: 10 spatial and 1 temporal), but the existence of more than four dimensions would only appear to make a difference at the subatomic level

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In purely mathematical terms you can have models with as many dimensions as you like ~ all of them at 90 degrees to each other

These models are used for the analysis of data or to explore interactions in complex mathematical/physical/chemical/biological/etc processes. The dimensions/planes/spaces/etc in these models do not have to be space-like or time-like or spacetime-like ~ they can represent quantities of anything eg imaginary numbers, voltage, populations, pressure, velocity - basically anything that can be measured or that you can imagine measuring

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Michael

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