Physicist: Back in the day, Galileo came up with the “Galilean Equivalence Principle” (GEP) which states that all the laws of physics work exactly the same, regardless of how fast you’re moving, or indeed whether or not you’re moving. (Acceleration is a different story. Acceleration screws everything up.) What Einstein did was to tenaciously hold onto the GEP, regardless of what common sense and everyone around told him. It turns out that the speed of light can be derived from a study of physical laws. But if physics is the same for everybody, then the speed of light (hereafter “C”) must be the same for everybody. The new principle, that the laws of physics are independent of velocity and that C is the same for everybody, is called the Einstein Equivalence Principle (EEP).
Moving faster makes time slow down: I’ve found that the best way to understand this is to actually do the calculation, then sit back and think about it. Now, if a relativistic argument doesn’t hinge on the invariance of C, then it isn’t relativistic. So ask yourself “What do the speed of light and time have to do with each other?”. A good way to explore the connection is a “light clock”. A light clock is a pair of mirrors, a fixed distance 
The proper time "τ" is how long it takes for the clock to tick if you're moving with it. The world time "t" is the time it takes for the clock to tick if you're moving with a relative velocity of V.
Let’s say Alice is holding a light clock, and Bob is watching her run by, while holding it, with speed V. Alice is standing still (according to Alice), and the time, 
It turns out that the really useful quantity here is the ratio: 
It may seem at first glance that the different measurements are an illusion of some kind, like things in the distance looking smaller and slower, but unfortunately that’s not the case. For Alice the light definitely travels a shorter distance, and the clock ticks faster. For Bob the light really does travel a greater distance, and the clock ticks slower. If you’re wondering why there’s no paradox, or want more details, then find yourself a book on relativity. There are plenty. Or look up Lorentz boosts. (The very short answer is that position is also important.)
The lower the slower: Less commonly known, is that the lower you are in a gravity well, the slower time passes. So someone on a mountain will age (very, very slightly) faster than someone in a valley. This falls into the realm of general relativity, and the derivation is substantially more difficult. Einstein crapped out special relativity in a few months, but it took him another 10 years to get general relativity figured out. Here’s a good way to picture why (but not quite derive how) acceleration causes nearby points to experience time differently:
Redder light at the top, bluer light at the bottom.
Alice and Bob (again) are sitting at opposite ends of an accelerating rocket (that is to say; the rocket is on, so they’re speeding up). Alice is sitting at the Apex (top) of the rocket and she’s shining a red light toward Bob at the Bottom of the rocket. It takes some time (not much) for the light to get from the Apex of the rocket to the Bottom. In that time Bob has had a chance to speed up a little, so by the time the light gets to him it will be a little bit blue-shifted. Again, Alice sees red light at the Apex and Bob sees blue light at the Bottom.
Counting the blue crests is faster than counting the red crests. However, since it's all the same light beam the number of crests has to be the same to everybody.
The time between wave crests for Bob are short, the time between wave crests for Alice are long. Say for example that the blueshift increases the frequency by a factor of two, and Alice counts 10 crests per second. Then Bob will count 20 crests per second (No new crests are being added in between the top and the bottom of the rocket). Therefore, 2 seconds of Alice’s time happens in 1 second of Bob’s time. Alice is moving through time faster.
Einstein’s insight (a way bigger jump than the EEP) was that gravitational acceleration and inertial acceleration are one and the same. So the acceleration that pushes you down in a rocket does all the same things that the acceleration due to gravity does. There’s no way to tell if the rocket is on and you’re flying through space, or if the rocket is off and you’re still on the launch pad.
It’s worth mentioning that the first time you read this it should be very difficult to understand. Relativity = mind bending.
Hello. Everything you all explain is clear to me and is correct…and when you think about it is pretty simple. But…time isn’t moving…light is moving and a clocks mechanism is moving at certain speeds and all that moves in opposed to each other reacts due to different speeds…but again no one is thinking of time as a stillness. Therefore:
If I am starring at a clock which has one minute to 12 and I am travelling away from the clock at the speed of light, meaning that the image of the clock ticking one minute to 12 is moving towards my eyes the same speed as I am travelling, therefore it will allways be one to 12 for me but for other people who are standing by the clock,time will pass normally. So it is said that i will not age and everyone else will…..don’t think so.I will age the same as they do. If I counted seconds in my mind(not looking at the watch or my wrist watch)while travelling away,time would be the same.Why?If i didn’t travell into space,but rather around the clock at the speed of light, no one would see me,I wouldn’t see reality but an after image….but i could still count the same as the clock at the beginning of the story.My wrist watch may be off by years.But would age the same. A pilot in a jet counts time the same as you do, and it doesn’t matter how fast he goes. Clocks can trick you and make you think of time as something that moves.
For example…I talk to a friend: Hey lets count 10 seconds together but I will make a trillion laps around the world at the speed of light during our count. Ok? And go!
1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10.He would be 10 seconds older and so would I!
But than again….this is just my opinion;)
David: I understood your example of “time” is “mechanical” movement of the clock and also time-space dilemma when you move away from the clock @ the speed of light but why time is slowing down with you travelling @ speed of light wearing that wrist watch?
Hello. Please read Vocation’s comments.
Maybe it will be clearer to you than.
For what it’s worth,I for one am 100 percent with his statement.
You only see something…that doesn’t mean that it is what you see…understand?
You are looking at the past…but it is not the past over there,is it? You are only deceaving
yourself. And that is what I tried to say in my previous statement.
I am stating that the movie “Interstellar” is wrong 😉
I still don’t understand how alice would see the photon reach her at the same time as she was when she wasn’t moving sideways but Bob would definitely see a time difference
David: you have to trust a bit more in the people who actually learned A LOT about this. They are quite capable of understanding these kind of simple things. What you are presenting here is known as the Dunning-Kruger effect;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
What you are referring to in your post is only the socalled Doppler effect, and has nothing to do with the actual time dilation;
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SR/TwinParadox/twin_doppler.html
Time dilation means all laws of physics are going at a slower rate, including how fast your mind works, so you won’t notice a thing. Altogether with that effect, you have the Doppler effect, which is what you described, which has no influence at all on what is actually happening, but is only about what is seen, which are two completely different things.
There are only 2 constants at a base of special relativity;
* a constant speed of light measured by every observer, regardless of their relative motion or of the motion of the source of the light
* all laws of physics are the same for all observers in uniform motion relative to one another
Yes, I understand your point.
But first of all:
David says:
September 19, 2015 at 9:25 am
But than again…this is just my opinion;)
After my comment, telling me that I am presenting the Dunning-Kruger effect, is just rude.
Second:
How speed of light is held to be constant, when light going through Water travels with slower than light going through air, or when light travels through matters at ABSOLUTE ZERO temperature, travels at the speed of a bicycle ?What about longitudinal waves that appear to travel much faster than light? Or what about the proven mathematical correlation between particles that where once in contact but are now lightyears apart yet which under Bell’s Theorem seem to be instantaneously connected?
Third: I know we are all talking about vacuum measuring,but you cannot use something effected by speed to measure time with. You can use something which is not effected by anything.
Fourth:I know that GPS proves Einstain was right.(doesn’t prove that the expiration date of the satellite is wrong from Earths point.
Fifth:Imagine I am in a shuttle and moving at…whatever…lets say half the speed of light.From a point, my clock is ticking faster than the speed of light? Just depending on how I am facing my clock(laser clock)I can change various outcomes of time measured?
Six:You can’t prove I am wrong because you do not have a grandpa twin …you can prove time measuring differences on time measuring devices. Nothing else.
The mistake that Einstein said was incorrect with relativity was that he did not take into account electricity and magnetism. This is now being included and the new learning has thrown relativity out the window.
Any way….please make an experiment with two humans and show me. And than….if you are correct…..than you can be rude.
Till than…you are relatively correct.
@David
Great questions!
The important thing about the speed of light is the speed, not the light itself. There’s a post here that talks about that a bit. When light travels through a material is does a lot of starting and stopping; on average it travels slower, but when it moves it’s still moving at the usual speed (post here). Importantly, the speed of light through different materials has nothing at all to do with relativity.
There are effects that seem to travel faster than light, but they never actually involve things doing so. A good example is this experiment. It sounds exciting, but even the folk who did that particular experiment are quick to say that they never actually got anything to go faster than light.
Bell’s theorem implies some pretty wild stuff about how the universe works, but unfortunately it doesn’t involve anything going faster than light either. Every now and again someone will come along and propose a method of using entanglement to “cheat” relativity, but without exception there’s always been a flaw in their reasoning and their experiments never work (post here).
Just a quick note, Einstein’s original paper was titled (in German) “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies”. The theory of relativity was originally written to explain the relationship between electric and magnetic fields; EM is built into its bones.
Thank you very much for explaining, I understand.
Quick thought: Lets say that we can go fast as near 300 000 km/h in a brand new rocket. And we launch the rocket(very slowly in comparison to the speed of light) and position our selves near the Moon from where we are going to engage in that high speed.
Where is 0 km/h from where we will start? Does anyone know? Because we measure speed relative to Earth right?
We already are on a vessel. Our galaxy, which is also on a vessel of kind.So we already are moving at high speeds and we would start at those speeds…so we basically wouldn’t have to reach 300 000,rather find a direction to which to go in order to maximize our speed relative to the stillness in space which is 0 km/h? Yes?
Or a better question? Is it possible to reach 0 km/h?
Hi David,
Speed is relative, so everything can be seen as moving at 0 km/h, or ‘almost’ the speed of light. Light will always be seen as moving at it’s same steady speed, as observed from any of these observers, so light is actually a completely different realm than the realm of matter.
@David
“you can prove time measuring differences on time measuring devices. Nothing else.”
Actually it’s worse. You can only prove counting differences on counting devices. There are no devices that measure time. There are devices that count vibrations, oscillations or other periodically occurring physical events.
Some of these physical phenomena are affected by motion. But there is no proof that any of those motions or differences in motion are at all related to some mysterious thing called time. Clocks count. They do not sample something a yield a reading.
Sorry for the typo. I meant to say at the end that clocks do not sample something AND yield reading.
Einstein theory of relativity States that as you travel near the speed of light that time slows down and matter shrinks. The first time I saw this in modern physics, I thought it was only relative and did not really affect the individual in the accelerated time frame I started to rationalize how this could be true. In our low energy state the hydrogen atom has 100000 to 1 distance between the nucleus and the electron as you increase your speed, to the speed of light the distance between the nucleus and the electron decrease to 1 to 1 this cause everything to shrink. Also time will slow down and then eventually stop at the speed of light. The reason time stops is based on Einstein proven theory that speed of light is a constant no matter what reference frame you are in. Speed is equal to distance divide by time to keep the speed of light a constant when you distance shrink time must also decrease equally to to keep speed of light constant. To accelerate to the speed of light you must increase energy into object, by increase the energy into an object this will cause the electrons to move closer to the nucleus in the atom. This happens because the increase in energy overcomes the repulsive nuclear force, between the nucleus and the electrons. Note: This affect is the same as increasing the gravitational field around an object. The gravitational field over comes the nuclear force causing the electrons to move closer to the nucleus. This agrees with Einstein theory about the warpage of space time (space shrinking and time slowing down around massive objects)
That’s always the weird thing about time. It really only exists in particles interacting with the Higgs field: matter. Empty spacetime in essence holds no time: it’s just a mathematical means to understand how matter behaves within it. Photons have no time; they don’t ‘age’, and have no frame of reference.
From our ‘matter’ point of view it almost seems they should have a frame of reference, but if our particles wouldn’t interact with (or far less well said; be slowed down by) the Higgs, then space and time couldn’t be derived out of the difference between these fields/particles.
If we had just decided to use the lightsecond (299799458 m) as a distance unit, then c would have been equal to 1, and we wouldn’t have had to use it to translate E to M anymore in E=Mc^2 * lorentzfactor. Also it would’ve added to our intuition on how time and space are very much entwined.
Steven, once you reach inertial motion of an object, after some initial accelerating, there are no forces doing anything anymore, so you can’t really compare that to gravity, which is effectively similar to continuous acceleration. An object is ‘flattened’ in the direction it’s moving, relative to the observer, so to another observer, in another frame of reference, the same object is flat in a completely different direction.
If it was simply the compression of a moving object by electrons moving closer to the nucleus, and time going slower, then all *other* objects from it’s own viewpoint would seem to be larger, with time going faster. But the thing about relativity is that both observers will obverse the other as being shrinked and going slower. So c acts like a sort of mirror, that way.
This is why c is much more than just the speed of light: it’s a universal constant. It’s the connection of energy to mass, and space to time, and this is also why we need to think of our mathematical spacetime grid changing, depending on the frame of reference of the observer, to be able keep a correct helicopter view of all possible events within it. How this changes for different frames of reference, is all expressed with mathematical structures, known as tensors.
this is for david,
I’m bill, riverside ca.
I understand the theory why time slows down at light speed, but does it really?
I mean, five minutes is five minutes right?
or would my wrist watch actually run slower if I were traveling at light speed and return to find everybody decades older?
could you send me an email with your response?
thanks
bill
Hi, I think both examples (the light clock and the rocket) do not explain or prove that time passes faster or slower depending on speed of an object. I think both proves are flawed. Let me explain:
– the light clock: Your experiment starts off with a photon being bounced between absolutely parallel mirrors. The distance the photon travels is defined by the distance between the two mirrors. The direction of the photon is given by the mirrors it bounces off from. The mirrors being exactly parallel, the photon’s direction is exactly perpendicular to the mirrors. If I move the box with the mirrors while the photon is moving, the location where the photon hits the mirror the next time is different. The direction of the photon does not change only because I move the box. Eventually when I move the box horizontally enough the photon which is on its way from one mirror to the other will hit the wall of the box and the experiment is dead. For the experiment to keep working with the box in motion the mirrors would need to be slightly tilted in the direction of the motion, directing the photon to the location the center of the mirror will be when the photon hits that mirror. The distance of the photon travelled this way is longer because it now travels slightly at an angle. The duration the photon takes for that distance is exactly the same whether measured by the Bob or Alice. Your experiment wrongly assumes that the photon somehow magically changes direction because the box is moving, but it does not!
– the rocket experiment is flawed too. Let me explain:
First, let’s assume that both Bob and Alice send out the same type of white light from their sources of light (not to confuse the blue and red any further).
We both agree that the light spreads at the same speed for both of them.
Let’s assume it is a huge rocket that stands on the ground and light takes exactly one second to travel from Bob to Alice. It also takes one second to travel from Alice to Bob (there is no motion yet), the light is neither shifted to red or blue for either of them.
Now, assume the rocket moves upwards at half the speed of light. A photon sent from Alice to Bob will now take 2/3 of a second (because the photon will travel at C and the movement of the rocket will shorten the distance by 1/3). Because Bob is now hit by higher frequency light, the light he preceives as blue shifted. The opposite is valid for Alice. She sort of runs away from Bob’s light source. A photon sent from Bob to her will take 1.5 seconds exactly (the time the light takes to travel from bottom to top of the rocket plus the distance the rocket travels in space during that one second). Alice is now hit by lower frequency light. She perceives the light as redshifted.
While Bob and Alice see different wave lenghts and different colors their time or their clocks still show exactly the same lapse of time. In other words when our rocket moves at half the speed of light for 10 seconds, both Bob and Alice will have spent the exact same 10 seconds, one seing red the other seeing blue light. the fact that one sees higher frequency light and the other sees lower frequency light has no influence on how fast time has passed for them.
Now, I realize I as a non physicist and non-mathematician stand alone with this argument amongst a world of geniuses and against a world of proves and experiments that confirm what you are stating is correct. Still, the arguments and so called proves you mention here do not make logical sense to me. I am very open to stand corrected and made understand
@Urs
You seem to confuse inert speed with acceleration in both your arguments.
– Einstein´s light clock
Einstein´s clock is *inert* during the thought experiment that shows how time is affected by motion. So there´s no acceleration needed to show this. This results in a saw tooth type of motion of the photon, as seen from the observer that sees the light clock from a train that moves with constant speed. In other words: for the observer outside the train, the photon is moving sideways. The observer in the train disagrees, and will say it is only moving up and down. Same would go with a bumping ball within the train, for that matter…
Once acceleration comes into play, you´re very right: there´s no reason for the photon between the mirrors to start moving sideways, if the train suddenly started to move. And it won´t. But this is not part of the thought experiment. Photons do have momentum, like the bumping ball, even though they don´t have a rest mass. So if there would be a laser light behind a top semitransparent mirror that points straight down to a parallel mirror at the bottom, and start shooting light downward, it won´t move straight down, as seen from the observer outside the train, if the train was moving sideways. This momentum originates from the energy within the photon (energy = mass).
– rocket experiment
Here, the rocket in Physicist´s example is accelerating, whereas it is moving at a constant speed in your given example.
To follow your example with the rocket moving at a constant speed of 0.5c: first of all, there´s no length contraction of that amount with a speed of only 0.5c. At 0.6c there is a length contraction of 0.8, as seen from a static observer. Since Alice and Bob are no static observers, since they´re both on the rocket, this length contraction won´t be noticed, because of their time dilation. This time dilation will make it appear for both Alice and Bob that their lights are white, and not blue or red shifted at all, since they’re not accelerating. Frequency has a time element.
As seen from a static observer, the light sent from the bottom arrives later at the top of the rocket that’s moving upwards at a constant speed, and light sent from the top arrives sooner at the bottom. But we also observe a time difference between the clocks of Alice and Bob, that is not there for Alice and Bob. This time difference exactly compensates for this.
SUPPOSE WHILE TRAVELING AT HIGH SPEED I AM HOLDING A CLOCK , WOULD THE TIME DILATE IN MY CLOCK TOO?
Regarding experimental evidence for time dilation based two initially synchronous clocks; one clock “at rest” on earth and another, now faster, clock in motion on an aircraft circling the earth, wouldn’t the “stationary” clock on earth be moving relative to the clock on the aircraft, thus run faster relative to it? In other words, if observer 1 stayed on earth with clock 1 and observer 2 stayed in the aircraft with clock 2, wouldn’t each observer view their respective clocks as being slow since the other was moving relative to them? If so, explanation for physical evidence from this experiment?
Another way to consider my question is from a symmetry perspective; since both clocks are moving relative to the other, why asymmetry in the outcome?
Eric, the asymmetry originates from one accelerating, where the other is not. Both travelers will always deduce the other having slower time, but during the turnaround point/phase, a lot is changing in the view of the traveler (the other aging rapidly), but not in view of the one that isn’t accelerating.
This is most clearly shown using Minkowski spacetime: http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/teaching/HPS_0410/chapters/spacetime_rel_sim/index.html
Tom, thanks for you quick reply. It makes sense that both deduce the other as time-dilated. Regarding effects due to acceleration at the turnaround point / phase, even that would seem to be symmetric in that each observer is remaining still relative to their inertial reference frame and the other would be experiencing the acceleration / turn around. With respect to my question on the empirical evidence based in accurate clocks (one at rest and one flown flown for a while at modest speed), my question (conundrum) stems from the aforementioned perspective consideration. I understand that both observers should perceive other’s time as dialated, but if the looked at each other’s clocks (mechanical/ physical objects) would they read the same thing – an assymmetry? Why would one inertial reference frame be dominant.
Best and Happy New Year!
@Eric
This post on the twin paradox and this post on the asymmetry you’re talking about should answer your question.
While velocity is relative, acceleration is not. Observers in different reference frames can disagree about how fast a given thing is moving, but they don’t disagree on whether or not it’s accelerating. When you accelerate you feel a push in some direction, but that doesn’t mean that everything else in the universe also feels a push.
Thanks Tom. That makes a lot of sense.
Interesting read on Hafele-Keating that considers potential errors and bias in the experiment; lack of observer-based time dialation in particular (rather reliance on assumption that earth geocentric inertial reference frame is dominant).
http://thescientificworldview.blogspot.com/2011/02/time-dilation-and-hafele-and-keating.html?m=1
To me, special and general relativity make mathematical and physical sense (light speed constant in all reference frames, space-time planes). It is the failure of H-K experiment to demonstrate basic prediction of SR relative to each clock’s own reference frame that I am concerned with. Perhaps this experiment was indeed flawed. What additional experimental evidence support time dialation? Preferably that which confirms reciprocal observations of time-dialation independent of a “master reference frame”.
Time travelling is also possible through wormholes right?
I agree with Ur and Tom’s arguments still don’t convince me that the thought experiments are accurate.
The light clock – While the observer on the train perceives the light only travelling in a perpendicular motion, the light is indeed also travelling sideways with the train. Whether that train is going at a steady speed, accelerating, or decelerating, the light is travelling sideways at the same speed of the train and the observer on the train. Just because the observer perceives the vertical motion doesn’t negate the fact that the light did in fact travel along the hypotenuse of motion combined by the vertical separation of the mirrors and the horizontal motion of the train. It therefore took exactly the same amount of time to “tick” the clock and the exact same amount of time passed for both observers. Even though Alice only perceived a vertical light shift, time didn’t change for her, only the illusion that the path the light took was purely vertical.
Rocket experiment – Whether they experience the wavelengths slower or faster than the other, time doesn’t change. Over some time period Alice emits a single wave of light. Over the same time period Bob will experience that light as either bluer (if the rocket is accelerating due to the time lag it took the light to travel the length of the rocket) or redder if the rocket is decelerating. Just because Bob experienced the light waves differently he was not experiencing time differently.
Time is a human construct designed to put things in order so that we can understand them better. Sadly it has gotten tied in with mathematical formulas of acceleration but has no real existence in the universe except in our minds. We count the transitions of a cesium atom and call that time but who’s to say that gravity and acceleration (which compresses atoms in much the same way as gravity) are really only affecting the performance of the atom (in a predictable manner) and not affecting time, a human notion invented to be able to catch the bus.
Hi Nukdookum,
You have to understand that the constant speed of light was not theorized by this thought experiment. It doesn’t prove anything. A constant speed of light was first experimentally discovered. The thought experiment of the light clock is merely a way of showing what observations you´d get with this experimentally verified phenomenon of constant light speed, and that relative time dilation is merely a necessary element in it, to be able to have that phenomenon within a non-conflicting world. It’s a necessary piece of the puzzle (and there are more piece than just time dilation). And it’s also one that’s been proven experimentally.
Of you’d conclude it only looks as though the light only moves vertically for the observer on the train, but that this is really an illusion, because he knows he is actually moving on the train (ignoring earth’s rotation, the movement of our earth around the sun and the total movement of our local galaxy group), so the light is also really moving sideways with the train, and there´s actually no time dilation at all, then you would inevitably have to conclude you would measure the light clock passing slower than an atomic or mechanical clock inside the train. You think a light clock is therefore simply a bad clock? Do you believe we should measure light arriving at earth more slowly, because a star that emitted it moved away from us? Or faster because the star was moving towards us?
If you, on the other hand, do trust experiments, and believe light is somehow always measured at a constant speed, but time simply never dilates, you’ll inevitably get conflicts. The traveler inside the train will ‘subjectively’ observe a light pulse going straight down, and is unable to account for ‘the real length of the path’ by considering all those other movements, like the train on earth, the earth’s rotation, the earth around the sun, and our local galaxy group moving.
The thing is, it is always measured at a constant speed, for any seemingly ‘subjective’ distance, without accounting for anything. So it is actually measured faster than light speed, if you would account for all those other movements.
So when scientists say the earth is 13.7B years old, when are they measuring from?
What if someone measured the time hovering above the Big Bang?
What if someone measured the time from the exact point the earth is now just hovering waiting for the universe to exapnd until the earth appeared here?
What if someone measured time from a parallel universe as far away as we can imagine?
What if someone measured time while hurling through space parallel to the energy that would eventually become atoms and matter, and molecules and rocks and planets and eventually become earth? Since they’re moving really fast, lot’s more time passes by to them?
How’s this relate to the event horizon of a black hole? I know that if Bob heads into a black hole, and Frank watches, time appears normal to bob while Frank would see him slow down and approach the event horizon until he appears to move so slow he appears to freeze in place. If light is a continuos stream, light would take an increasingly larger amount of time to get to Frank’s eye…
But what if light only emitted at a really fast rate on and off? Assume for comprehension purposes it’s one per second. Wouldn’t Frank eventually start to see Bob appear like a strobe light slowing down in frequency from one second to one minute to one hour and one per day as Bob appeared to accelerate because it would take longer and longer for the “on” light to reach? Or would the beam of light be so distorted from the movement away from Frank that as Bob accelerated, the one second of light would last increasingly longer?
What if Bob looked back at Frank? Wouldn’t he see Frank disappearing really fast and appear smaller really fast? Why is it the opposite for Frank if Bob is moving away really fast? If they’re moving apart from each other at the same speed shouldn’t it be the same? Are we talking about the lights reflecting off of Frank that Bob’s seeing or is Frank emitting photons that make seeing him possible?
Sorry for all the questions… I’m confused!
Sir,i dont know much about speed and time….nor i am having much knowledge of working of mind…so…i just want to know…does our brain releases any kind of chamical in fear condition through which we fell that time has got slow down??
This is happened with me so…asking….
Things are simple. Took me 15 years to understand but in short:
1) Einstein finds out that our universe is 4 dimensional, with 3 space dimensions and 1 which is called time.
2) We can’t “see” the 4th dimension, but we experience it us time.
3) In the 4th dimension there is always movement. Nothing is still. That is why we experience time. That is why when you shit in a chair motionless, you dont freeze, but time still goes on.
4) Being a dimension, time can take different values for different elements/people/dogs e.t.c. Just like it happens with lenght, width, height. We can experience this difference only at high speeds.
5) Space is not “empty”. It is dynamic. It has “substance”. At the presence of mass/energy or pressure, it bends to the point that 2 different bodies feel what we call “gravity”. They feel it even when they don’t move, cause at the 4th dimension there is always movement.
6)Speed of light is not actually speed of light. Is the speed of all massless things out there. Is the speed of causality.
7) To properly observe a 4 dimensional universe you need to be able to observe it from a 5th dimension. We can’t even observe the 4th (only experience it as time).
8) The most fantastic illusion of all, created by our brain, is the brightness of light. Actually the universe is a complete black, dark place, with particles floating around. What we see as light, is just our brain telling us ” I receive particles of x frequency at z quantity in t time”. Really amazing!!
Very good. A few responds to see if/where you´d agree…
>>Things are simple. Took me 15 years to understand but in short:
Even when things are simple they can often still be very counter intuitive!
>>2) We can’t “see” the 4th dimension, but we experience it us time.
We can only ´see´ one (3-D) slice of the 4th dimension at a time, but complete 4-D spacetime is motionless. For instance, our life can be seen as a 4-D object. Furthermore what is observed as pure space for one observer, is partly considered to be time for another observer in relative motion, which is why spacetime can be called ´timelike´ and ´spacelike´ (and ´lightlike´) in respect to an event.
>>3) In the 4th dimension there is always movement. Nothing is still. That is why we experience time. That is why when you shit in a chair motionless, you dont freeze, but time still goes on.
Although, interestingly, photons and other Majorana fermions don´t move in the 4th dimension for any observer, only through space. It ‘timelessly’ connects 2 spacetime events together.
>>4) Being a dimension, time can take different values for different elements/people/dogs e.t.c. Just like it happens with lenght, width, height. We can experience this difference only at high speeds.
Although the Pythagorean spacetime intervals are always agreed upon for every observer.
>>5) Space is not “empty”. It is dynamic. It has “substance”. At the presence of mass/energy or pressure, it bends to the point that 2 different bodies feel what we call “gravity”. They feel it even when they don’t move, cause at the 4th dimension there is always movement.
Although Einstein himself was never a fan of our current geometrical view on spacetime curvature. This was mainly popularized by his professor, Hermann Minkowski. The effect of energy on spacetime geometry can equally be seen as an effect on matter and the ´space-time exchange rate´ c.
>>8) The most fantastic illusion of all, created by our brain, is the brightness of light. Actually the universe is a complete black, dark place, with particles floating around. What we see as light, is just our brain telling us ” I receive particles of x frequency at z quantity in t time”. Really amazing!!
Very Feynmanesque! He always enjoyed understanding how extremely weird very normal things can be.
I was traveling in my brother car at a fast rate. Not to sure how fast we were going, but the speed was fast. I had a an actual clock in the vehicle along with us. As we were speeding I glanced at the clock. The hands on the clock were moving by themself at a fast rate. This is when I discovered speed has everything to do with time. Yes time travel is possible I know because I also seen Albert Einstein he walk past me call me crazy if you like but I know I seen that man is is time traveling
SUPPOSE WHILE TRAVELING AT HIGH SPEED I
AM HOLDING A CLOCK , WOULD THE TIME
DILATE IN MY CLOCK TOO?
@Hendrix:
Nope! Everyone always sees their own clock acting normally. Time dilation is something that you can only see other things experience.
I know this comment was a while back, but David asked if light speed was relative go the Earth, but, light is the same for everything, it doesn’t need to be relative to anything.
There is a great emphasis on clocks getting faster or slower. This purely indicates that clocks get faster or slower, it does not indicate that time changes. If I stand on the clock, the clock stops. However, time continues.
Time is a measurement of events but controls none. If I speed up my clock I will still live at the same pace according to the events of my body.
However, speed must effect physical things as all of the particles that we are aware of that constitute physical things have a relationship with the speed of light.
Atoms are 99.9% (or whatever)
empty space but that space can only be maintained if the electrons are free to maintain their relationship with the nucleus. As the atom approaches the speed of light the freedom of the electrons in the direction of motion is constrained and therefore the free space is reduced ultimately resulting in the electron and any ensemble of electrons occupying less space in the direction of motion.
As a consequence it cannot be said that because a, for instance, caesium clock operates at different rates when exposed to acceleration that time has changed, just that the physics of the component particles have changed.
Light Clock
A light clock is working in a moving train. Light path of light clock is illustrated vertically (in books). But this light clock leans somewhat to the right (or to the left). So, to an observer who stands on the ground, zigzag of the light path (saw-tooth like) warps. Two kinds of dilation ? And if two clocks work, and if these lean differs ?
Relativity says that light is measured as being the same speed in all frames of reference. Note that it does not say that photons travel at different speed in different frames of reference. A photon emitted in frame a, passing through frame b and being detected in frame c travels at the same speed ‘c’ in independently of the relative velocity of the frames relative to each other. However, a stream of photons (light) when measured will result in a light speed of ‘c’ independent of the relative velocity of the frame.
Key to this is that a photon, when emitted, has no relationship with the frame in which it was emitted. i.e. it proceeds with a velocity ‘c’ from the point in ‘space’ (whatever that may be) that it was emitted in. To claim otherwise would be to infer that photons took on the momentum of the Frame of Reference (FoR) which would infer that photons had a mass which infers that it would require infinite energy to raise them to the speed of light.
Draw up a diagram with three FoR all travelling at different relative speeds. All FoR are proceeding in a line in the same direction. The slowest travelling FoR will be the last in line.
If a photon is emitted from a source in this FoR and passes through both other FoRs which are able to sense it without altering its velocity or direction, and which have two such sensors 1 metre apart, bearing in mind that one metre is the distance travelled by light in 1/299792458 second, in each FoR the time taken for the light to travel between sensors is taken to be 1 second. So, since both FoR come up with the same answer, the speed of light is a constant in both FoR.
However, take into account that after passing the first detector, the second detector travels some distance ahead, the actual distance travelled in ‘space’ is slightly more that the distance between the two detectors in the frame of reference.
The only way to reconcile this with the theory of relativity is to say that time has slowed down so the formula t=dv remains valid when your measurement of d between the sensors is different to the distance the photon actually travelled between the sensors.
Carry this principle on to a single FoR which has an emitter in the centre and two detectors, one at either end and, bearing in mind that a photon emitted has no relationship with the FoR, if the emitter emits photons backwards and forwards in a stream (i.e. a beam of light) in one direction the photons will reach the detector earlier and in the other it will be later. However, since each photon in the stream is emitted at a slightly different position in ‘space’ the frequency relationship between photons arriving at each detector will remain the same as the frequency of the photons emitted. In this case any measurement process would indicate that the speed of light in both directions was the same indicating that the velocity of the FoR had no impact on the speed of light.
Hope you noticed my deliberate error:
“in each FoR the time taken for the light to travel between sensors is taken to be 1 second.”
should read “1/299792458 second”
I totally agree with David’s thoughts. In my understanding, time will never slow down with increase in speed. Why it has to ? just because our watch slows down ? Any measuring instrument in the world, which measures time, may be a mechanical, electrical, electronic or digital instrument, may have an effect of travel at a very high speed, because all these instruments are made of some physical things, like mechanical watch has metal parts, and so electrical, electronics or digital watches has something which is visible to human eyes and made up of certain substances. But counting a time doesn’t necessarily require an instrument.
Taking an example of David again – Lets say me and my friend stands on the earth and starts counting time in seconds in mind ( without any kind of watch ). We decided to count say 60 seconds. Within these 60 seconds counts, lets assume, my friend stays there only on the earth, while I travel at the speed to light and come back to him. So during these 60 seconds, my friend naturally would not have covered any distance, as he was stand still, where as I would have covered 18 million kms. So how does it matter, if I was stand still or I travelled at the speed of light ?. The time taken for our count of 60 seconds would remain the same ( even for me as well ).
Technically, 60s counted in your mind is subject to the same physical (namely neurotransmissiin / electrochemical), so this mental counting does not provide a strong argument. Time is something we’ve contrived to relate to and unify our physical world – like our mathematic and physics models/laws, it is imperfect. General relativity provides a correction (or model refinement) for our imperfect models and arbitrary concept of time.
The apparent paradox lies in relative inertial reference frames. In your example, who was traveling – You as you suggest or your friend who remains still in his (and your initial) reference frame while traveling at light speed in the other direction with respect to you staying still in yours? In reality, this trip would involve acceleration (at least at turnaround point) that would bring general relativity into play. Thus when you get back from your trip and both together again in one reference frame having travelled at equal and opposite high-speed journeys while the other remained still, your clocks should be the same – but what was time doing during the trip? It was dialated in each moving frame relative to the other – converging upon return due to acceleration.
Without these relativistic corrections, light speed would not be a constant across reference frames – which it is.
There is no such thing as TIME
You have Stability and you have Change.
When things change we have a need to describe what has changed.
There is an infinite way that things can change.
But one of them is (e.g. ) position. When something (e.g. a particle) moves from position A to position B the only thing that has changed is position. It does not matter whether that took an Eon or a Light Year, the only thing that has changed is position.
Whoops! I introduced TIME. What is TIME, it is information of a past event. Information is not a thing. It describes a thing.
Yes but…. there is no physical displacement without time. So it must be a thing. Just not a physical thing. It’s an arbitrary concept (which is a thing) that we apply to quantify relative rates of change.
Eric Says:
“Without these relativistic corrections, light speed would not be a constant across reference frames – which it is.”
Actually it is not.
A stream of photons emitted with a defined periodicity from a source on your reference frame will arrive at a sensor on your reference frame with the same periodicity (I am avoiding ‘frequency’ because of multiple possible interpretations).
If we take the periodicity as being 1 second (for simplicity) and your reference frame is moving at a constant speed of 1 foot per second (although you could never know) each photon emitted will be emitted one foot further than the previous one in the direction of travel. In the meantime, your sensor has moved one foot further away than it was when the source emitted the photon. The distance between the source and the sensor will remain constant and the periodicity of the photons arriving at the sensor will be the same as the periodicity of the source. Although you will never know, because you can’t actually measure it.
But, if you measured the distance in your reference frame between the source and the sensor and you calculated how long it would take a photon to travel that distance, you would find, if you could find, that the photon takes longer than you calculated.
You are describing a Doppler effect for light. My understanding is that time dialation and length contraction (special relativity) adjust so that c is c irrespective of source and or observer movement.
Eric says:
“Yes but…. there is no physical displacement without time. So it must be a thing. Just not a physical thing. It’s an arbitrary concept (which is a thing) that we apply to quantify relative rates of change.”
If you feel an arbitrary concept is a thing, then time is a thing, but personally I wouldn’t.
If there is no physical displacement is there time? And if so, how long does it last?
Eric Says
“You are describing a Doppler effect for light. My understanding is that time dialation and length contraction (special relativity) adjust so that c is c irrespective of source and or observer movement.”
No, I am not describing a doppler effect. Doppler effect is when the perceived frequency of light changes due to changes in the relationship between the observer and the source.
The perceived frequency of light never changes when the source and the observer are in the same reference frame. Hence the special relativity statement ‘that the speed of light is MEASURED as being the same in all reference frames’.
Note, that the speed of a photon is independent of reference frame and a photon is light.