Saw some fairly interesting ideas on YouTube which can be poorly summed as follows:
There is no dimension of time ( or duration ) as we like to think of the 4th dimension. There is merely the perception of it formed by the passage of the higher dimension through the lower. So to understand this easier we could imagine a 2 dimensional intelligence living in a paper like world. As the 3rd dimension passed through it they would see 'slices' of the 3d world ( so a football would start as a dot gradually expand into a circle and then decrease into a dot before disappearing from the 2d world.) The important thing would be the perception of events occurring in a linear direction and would be interpreted by the 2d being as time passing.
The next interesting observation this brings is a realisation that the 2d being is actually a 3d being being experiences in slices. As a 3d being we could see the 2d being in its full 3d representation, beginning to end including all the space it travelled through. Just the same way a 4d being would observe us as 4dimensions bounded by a mass of atoms at birth, swirling across 4 dimensional space until at some point we cease and the atoms disperse. To a 4d being we would be static and unmoving, a complete whole.
This then has the next interesting conclusion. To be observable in 4dimensions we must have already 'been', in other words their are no 3d choices in a 4 d world, we seem to choose but in reality we are already all we will ever be and we only seem to make choices but in reality we merely allow the movement of the 4dimension through the 3rd reveal ourselves slice by slice.
In 4dimension the 3d universe already exists - like the football - and we can see slices as we pass through it seeing it expand from a single dot - seeming to appear from nothing and then maybe disappearing to nothing. Virtual particles popping into existence are not therefore coming from nothing they are merely our perception of a configuration of the 4d world, just like a 2d experience of bread that slice by slice would seem to bubble and froth in and out of existence with no great pattern.
Interesting thought experiment.
Ill get my coat.