Sean Williams sent me this little gem, an article on a paper that suggests that time might be three dimensional, after all.

In a recent study, mathematician George Sparling of the University of Pittsburgh examines a fundamental question pondered since the time of Pythagoras, and still vexing scientists today: what is the nature of space and time? After analyzing different perspectives, Sparling offers an alternative idea: space-time may have six dimensions, with the extra two being time-like.

Familar to readers of Hal Duncan's Book of All Hours, no? As he said in a recent interview,

"There's an idea of 3D time that underpins VELLUM, an idea that as well as the forward-and-back linear time we're aware of, there's a side-to-side of parallel worlds, and an up-and-down of realities which work by different metaphysics entirely."

I doubt very seriously that Sparling's math is suggesting anything like the world of Vellum and Ink, but it's a nice little bit of symmetry between speculation and science, isn't it?