| 释义 |
space-time, adj. phr. and n.|ˌspeɪsˈtaɪm|
Also spacetime, space time.
[space n.1]
A. adj. phr. Pertaining to or situated in both space and time.
1905R. B. Perry Approach to Philos. 131 An experimentally verifiable system must contain space-time variables. 1938Harper's Mag. Jan. 151/2 If you denounce him as a ‘Jew’, apart from his space-time characteristics, you perform a monstrous act. 1965Math. in Biol. & Med. (Med. Res. Council) v. 227 For many years leukaemia has been alleged to occur in clusters, though the evidence has been largely anecdotal and its interpretation intuitive because of the difficulties..of formulating the hypothesis of space-time clustering in precise and testable terms. 1973Nature 27 July 214/2 The projection of the most recent seismic migration wave to the latitude of maximum recurrence of earthquakes provides the basis for setting the space-time bounds on the next earthquake greater than magnitude 5.
B. n. Physics. [tr. G. raumzeit.] Time and three-dimensional space regarded as fused in a four-dimensional continuum containing all events. Also attrib.
1915E. Cunningham Relativity 9 (heading) The space⁓time transformations. Ibid. 10 Newtonian Relativity consists in the fact that either (x, y, z, t) or (x′, y′, z′, t′) are equally valid as space-time coordinates. 1927S. Ertz Now East, now West viii. 117 I've got quite drunk on theories about the space-time continuum. 1930Morning Post 17 June 13/1 The ‘metrical structure’ of space⁓time now adopted by Einstein is based on the assumption that there is a meaning in saying that two short lines are equal in length, that they are parallel, and that the angle between them is not altered when they are moved so as to remain parallel to themselves. 1934E. Muir Coll. Poems (1960) 44 Lengthening league by league The ghastly thin anatomy of Space Time Stripped to the nerve. 1940W. Empson Gathering Storm 18 But if it parts Into uncommunicable spacetimes. 1956Nature 10 Mar. 458/1 He [sc. H. Weyl] discovered the first ‘unified field theory’ in which the Maxwell field appears along with the gravitational field as a geometrical property of space-time. 1967G. Steiner Lang. Silence 283 We are imprisoned in the unexamined assumption or unconscious illusion of a homogeneous, forward-flowing space⁓time continuum. 1978Pasachoff & Kutner University Astron. xxvii. 695 The basic conclusion of the general theory [of relativity] is that gravitational fields change the geometry of spacetime. We say that in the presence of gravitational fields, spacetime becomes curved. |