Often, in science fiction literature, the concept that space and time are the same is proposed. This is both true and not true.
To understand how this is true, one needs to realize that we are always in motion. Quite simply, the planet is busy spinning around once every 24 hours while it also rotates around the sun once a year. Both give us movement at about a thousand miles an hour or sixty six thousand miles per hour respectively. But our rate of motion is much more complicated then that--in addition to the planet orbiting the sun, the sun orbits the center of the galaxy at about four hundred thousand miles per hour. The galaxy itself appears to be moving along at about six hundred thousand miles per hour.
One
can easily conceive the speed of a thousand miles per hour. But the
second figure—the speed of the planet—at sixty thousand miles—is
pretty hard to comprehend. Humans, after all have not been able to
achieve this speed themselves for things other then small atomic
particles. It may be possible for one to physically travel at that
speed, but our technology has not achieved this yet. The speed of the
solar system—at about two hundred kilometers per second—is
totally unfathomable. Once again, humans have only been able to send
small amounts of atomic particles at this speed.
And
then there's the direction—we are moving at a high rate speed
through space in a certain direction. Scientists can easily estimate
this direction by using distant reference points, just as they used
them to determine the speeds I cited earlier. But even the distant
objects are moving, and our relative size within the universe does
not allow us to realize exactly what direction we are traveling.
Now,
in reference, time is simply the place we will be in the next moment.
If we measure time using seconds,quite simply the future is just
there ahead of us in the exact direction that we are moving.
To
understand how this is not true, one also needs to understand the
scope of distance between objects in the universe. For simple items,
things are close by and almost instantly obtainable. Even larger
objects near our planet are achievable. Humans have been to the moon
and traveled to other planets within the solar system.
However, the sheer distance between any of the objects outside of the solar system is incomprehensible—so much so that we often measure them against the speed of light. Even the distance between the planet and the sun is measured in millions of miles—a distance that requires us months to travel. Earth's nearest non solar system neighbor is over four light years away—a distance that cannot be achieved in our time in physical travel.
If
humans were to attempt to travel there using current technology, we
would not be able to arrive within our lifetime. It would take
hundreds, if not thousands of generations to traverse this distance.
Humans would evolve in this environment, and it would be quite likely
that the truth of the mission would be lost within a mythology.
So, when one grasps the vast distance between these objects, their great speed, and our motion relative to them, it appears that we are standing still. This is in fact true, because our increment of time is so small within the scope of the universe we cannot experience the arrival at the destination. The next moment in time is only a second away from us. In there is a totally new universe, albeit one second ahead of where we are.