What are space and time? What is spacetime?

What are space and time?  What is spacetime?  This is not a joke, nor is it an idle question.  The answer concerns the deepest mysteries and confusions at the heart of physics.

Space and time are fixed references.  We know this is so for two reasons.

• Every measurement ever made of the large scale universe shows it to be flat (Euclidean).
• Special relativity depends upon the Pythagorean theorem, which requires Euclidean geometry to be true.  Experiments show it to be true.
• Every test ever made shows the speed of causation to be finite and fixed.

However, we know spacetime is curved.

• Special relativity describes the curving of space (contraction) and time (dilation).
• General relativity depends upon hyperbolic geometry.  Experiments show it to be true.

How can these two contradictory facts both be true in a universe without contradictions?

Category error.  Imprecise terminology.  They do not, cannot describe the same things.

• Space and time are fixed references.
• What we call spacetime is two separate but interdependent fields - kinetic (space) and potential (time) energy.

Just as the electric and magnetic fields guide and are influenced by the motions of charges (a type of energy), so too do the kinetic and potential fields depend upon each other and the motion of matter (a type of energy).

These are the fundamental laws of the universe:

• Magnetic - Electric = 0
• Kinetic - Potential = 1

Yes, potential energy (time squared) is negative.  That's because time is imaginary.  That's because time is a sort of spin.  Spins are scalars with opposites.  That implies antimatter is matter with opposite time spin.  Which implies that electric charges (opposite scalars) are types of spin which have positive and negative values in comparison to the spin of time.

You only have kinetic energy when you have motion (a vector).  You only have magnetic energy when you have motion (a vector).  Yet you always have electric charge (a scalar) and potential energy (a scalar).

So here we have another pairing:  vector with scalar.  So perhaps we should rewrite our basic equations:

• ||Magnetic|| - Electric = 0
• ||Kinetic|| - Potential = 1