Thank you all for your helpful messages. I think I'm getting there...slowly! Just for the record, I am talking ONLY about spacelike separated events. I fully agree with the 2 previous posts (thanks matheinste & Fredrik).
I guess it is tempting to believe that there IS a true ordering of events...
I am certainly not disputing SR or GR - I fully appreciate that time dilation, etc. DOES occur. What I'm struggling with is the concept that from the Big Bang to (perhaps) the Big Crunch, lots of events happen throughout the Universe, and we may all disagree on the TIMING and the ORDERING of...
Hi tiny-tim. You are right, we cannot MEASURE truly when (or where) events occur, as we are all in our own frame of reference (as per my post above). I guess it's more of a philosophical point that there IS a flow of time in terms of all universal events, we just cannot accurately measure it...
OK,Thanks Ich. I would love to plug numbers in, but I'm not really a scientist ;-)
I guess what I'm driving at is that there must be an absolute truth on the order of events that occur throughout the universe. The trouble is, nobody can know what that truth is because we will all be in our own...
Hi Mentz114,
Thanks for the reply. I understand that there is no absolute clock with which we can all synchronise with, but surely every event that happens in the Universe occurs at an absolute time (even though we may all disagree on when that time was). In order for an observer to 'know' when...
Hi folks - I'm struggling here! Please help ;-)
Surely the concept of relativity of simultaneity is an illusion based on the finite speed of light?
If an observer witnesses an event (Event A) and is at distance of zero (d=0) from Event A, then that is the TRUE time the event occurred. It is...