Questions about Time, Distance, and Relativity

[Mudhammam]

A good read of Flatland might help. How about this: let's say you're in a car going 100 mph, driving east to west. There's someone south of you, and he sees you silhouetted on the horizon. You turn your car 45 degrees to the right, so you're now going northwest. He can only see the car's east-west movement, do to him it now looks like you're only going about 71 mph (100*sqrt(2)/2).

When we're not moving, we're going (speed of light) through time. When we move, it's like we're still going the same speed, but we've turned 45 degrees (or, in reality, like, a billionth of a degree) off of the straight past-to-future line and into the set of dimensions we see.

That's probably a really inexpert way of thinking about it, but that's how I always sort of conceptualized it. Someone please tell me if I'm way off. And I will note that the particular paragraph you quoted, for me, was the one paragraph in that book that I have always remembered and cherished.

I don't think you're off. That sounds pretty similar to an analogy Greene offers.