Question about time and measurement

[questionator89]

Hi PF people,
I am brand new to PF and this is my first post so please excuse and help correct any mistakes I make.
My question is about time, the perception of time and the units we measure it in.
I figured I would start this question with a statement because if my general understanding of this is wrong then this may be the problem to begin with.

So let's use two objects. One is traveling at high velocity and one slow. My understanding is that the object going slower will experience more units of time than the object going fast.

If this is true then my next question is do other planets (specifically in our solar system) experience the same passage of time?
If not does this mean if another Earth were duplicated and was traveling slower that these earth2 people would be many generations ahead of us?
If so does this mean that they are all traveling at the same speed due to the gravity of our sun?
Or that our solar system as a grouped unit is traveling at one speed?
Or that our Galaxy has an inherent velocity?

If our sun was also moving would time slow down as we went in the opposite direction our sun was traveling during our elliptical orbit?
And I would guess this would mean when we change velocity in any way we are leaving a time frame dimension or membrane or something?

Can someone actually just explain to me the whole time and speed thing?
is time a byproduct of speed? or is speed a byproduct of time? do they both just have to exist the way they do for anything to move or BE at all?

im sorry for the annoying way these questions were laid out, this is my first post and I didnt even complete high school.

 

[questionator89]

I just want to add.
If I were Dumbledore with a physics degree and created two clocks completely made of entangled particles so they were identical. I then make a spaceship and launch one of these clocks away at a very fast speed.
Would the clocks read the fast moving slow time, or the slow moving fast time?
Furthermore if i made a bar of copper+entangled duplicate, sent one with the clock, then put an electrical current through the one I kept with me, what would happen to the spaceship copper?
Does this create entangled electrons from a spooky distance?

 

[Nugatory]

So let's use two objects. One is traveling at high velocity and one slow. My understanding is that the object going slower will experience more units of time than the object going fast.

If this is true then...

It's not true.
There's another fairly recent thread on this: https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=712960

 

[questionator89]

Lol, thank you Nugatory. This those answers seemed logical. We have to stop watching Brian Greene talk about stuff.

 

[harrylin]

Hi PF people,
I am brand new to PF and this is my first post so please excuse and help correct any mistakes I make.
My question is about time, the perception of time and the units we measure it in.
I figured I would start this question with a statement because if my general understanding of this is wrong then this may be the problem to begin with.

So let's use two objects. One is traveling at high velocity and one slow. My understanding is that the object going slower will experience more units of time than the object going fast.

Hi welcome to physicsforums.

That is quite correct if you measure as follows:

A------------------------------B

Let's say that you have two identical atomic clocks with identical readings at point A. Now clock 1 is moved fast from A to B, and clock 2 is moved slowly from A to B. Then you compare the two clocks at B and you will find that clock 1 is behind on clock 2. In other words, the clock that moved slower will have recorded more units of time than the clock that moved fast.

Most other questions are perhaps covered in the other thread.

[..] is time a byproduct of speed? or is speed a byproduct of time? do they both just have to exist the way they do for anything to move or BE at all? [..]

Time and speed are human made concepts; most probably the universe doesn't depend on our existence. If nothing moved at all then there would be no speed to be measured. And as time measurements are based on motion, there also would be no time.

I just want to add.
If I were Dumbledore with a physics degree and created two clocks completely made of entangled particles [..]

I don't know if that is possible. And as your question involves SR+QM, that is a question to ask in the general physics forum.

 

[questionator89]

Thanks Harrylin I will move this question to general physics.
The way you explained that brings up my previous questions again it seems.
Although the objects I was describing weren't traveling from one point to another. The way you explained it is obvious, the slower object didn't reach the point B spot till much later and would obviously count more units of time.
Really what i thought was happening was if an outside observer were to look at both the clocks (and he had a clock) and after a certain amount of time by his clock, he would check the clocks of the 2 moving objects and see if there was a discrepancy.
I was listening to Ray Kurzweil spiel off about obvious stuff (no disrespect, he's brilliant, but his singularity theory is just an inevitable outcome of any form of education) and he said " an astronaut that orbits the Earth at a fast rate will actually experience less time than the people on earth, not just his perception but actual clocks".

This actually seems to be a very commons misconception. The closer you come to the speed of light the less time you experience in comparison to a slow object.

Anyways, you say time and speed are human made concepts. Not really man, i would say they are the words we use to describe something that's actually happening.

even a non sentient object will experience time. Thorium breaks down for example. I am sure they can "experience" speed as well.

 

[Drakkith]

I was listening to Ray Kurzweil spiel off about obvious stuff (no disrespect, he's brilliant, but his singularity theory is just an inevitable outcome of any form of education) and he said " an astronaut that orbits the Earth at a fast rate will actually experience less time than the people on earth, not just his perception but actual clocks".

This actually seems to be a very commons misconception. The closer you come to the speed of light the less time you experience in comparison to a slow object.

From here: http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~pogge/Ast162/Unit5/gps.html

Because an observer on the ground sees the satellites in motion relative to them, Special Relativity predicts that we should see their clocks ticking more slowly (see the Special Relativity lecture). Special Relativity predicts that the on-board atomic clocks on the satellites should fall behind clocks on the ground by about 7 microseconds per day because of the slower ticking rate due to the time dilation effect of their relative motion.

Further, the satellites are in orbits high above the Earth, where the curvature of spacetime due to the Earth's mass is less than it is at the Earth's surface. A prediction of General Relativity is that clocks closer to a massive object will seem to tick more slowly than those located further away (see the Black Holes lecture). As such, when viewed from the surface of the Earth, the clocks on the satellites appear to be ticking faster than identical clocks on the ground. A calculation using General Relativity predicts that the clocks in each GPS satellite should get ahead of ground-based clocks by 45 microseconds per day.

The combination of these two relativitic effects means that the clocks on-board each satellite should tick faster than identical clocks on the ground by about 38 microseconds per day (45-7=38)!

 

[harrylin]

[..] Although the objects I was describing weren't traveling from one point to another. The way you explained it is obvious, the slower object didn't reach the point B spot till much later and would obviously count more units of time. [..]

That's not what I wrote. Instead, I wrote that the two clocks that started out synchronously are out of sync after the travel. Indeed, according to the "rest frame" measurements, the faster moving clock ticked slower during the journey than the slower moving clock. I thought that perhaps that was what you had in mind.

Really what i thought was happening was if an outside observer were to look at both the clocks (and he had a clock) and after a certain amount of time by his clock, he would check the clocks of the 2 moving objects and see if there was a discrepancy.

Yes, that is also correct, if the outside observer uses an inertial reference system for measurements and he/she "sees" by means of making a standard assumption about the time delay for the signals of those distant clocks to reach his/her clock. But since you had not mentioned a third clock, I interpreted what you said such that it was possible to compare the two clocks side by side. That's much simpler and more direct, as you don't need to make assumptions about signal transfer.

I was listening to Ray Kurzweil spiel off about obvious stuff (no disrespect, he's brilliant, but his singularity theory is just an inevitable outcome of any form of education) and he said " an astronaut that orbits the Earth at a fast rate will actually experience less time than the people on earth, not just his perception but actual clocks".

This actually seems to be a very commons misconception. The closer you come to the speed of light the less time you experience in comparison to a slow object.

See Drakkith's reply. If you try to understand special relativity, astronauts in orbit can be confusing as there you have to do with general relativity: the higher you are the faster your clocks tick. That makes it more complex, and not good for learning SR.

Anyways, you say time and speed are human made concepts. Not really man, i would say they are the words we use to describe something that's actually happening.[..]

Yes of course, those concepts are based on observations; and for sure, without observing motion we cannot create the concept of time. And our understanding and description of what is actually happening has changed with relativity theory.

 

[Dale]

I just want to add.
If I were Dumbledore with a physics degree and created two clocks completely made of entangled particles so they were identical. I then make a spaceship and launch one of these clocks away at a very fast speed.
Would the clocks read the fast moving slow time, or the slow moving fast time?

They would each read their own proper time. Entanglement doesn't change anything locally observable on either particle or ensemble.

 

[questionator89]

Thanks again Harrylin,
So I am not good at interpreting what is being said to me I think.
So what you and Drakkith are saying is that a sort of gravity-friction slows down the mechanism the clock runs by?
Atom oscillations or however these clocks run, move faster away from the space-time warp caused by our massive earth?
Because if they move faster away from Earth that is the opposite of what I thought.
I thought the faster you were going the slower time would tick.

Lets say we had two musicians with perfect timing, one on Earth and one in a fast orbiting spaceship. Would they experience a difference in time?
I am just trying to think of a non mechanical clock or some way to ask this question better.

DaleSpam, maybe I don't understand entanglement. If the two clocks were entangled does this not mean whatever one clock does the other has to do?
If one was in a denser gravity field it would be subject to different environmental variables. Like, would this break entanglement or would one clock decide what time both clocks display?

I really appreciate u three taking the time to read and post.
Should I move this question to GR? or once its posted its kind of too late or what?

 

[Drakkith]

Thanks again Harrylin,
So I am not good at interpreting what is being said to me I think.
So what you and Drakkith are saying is that a sort of gravity-friction slows down the mechanism the clock runs by?

No, it's just stand time dilation due to relative motion and gravity.

Atom oscillations or however these clocks run, move faster away from the space-time warp caused by our massive earth?
Because if they move faster away from Earth that is the opposite of what I thought.
I thought the faster you were going the slower time would tick.

The orbiting satellites are ticking slower because they are moving relative to us, AND they are they are ticking faster because they are further away from Earth and experience less gravity.

Lets say we had two musicians with perfect timing, one on Earth and one in a fast orbiting spaceship. Would they experience a difference in time?
I am just trying to think of a non mechanical clock or some way to ask this question better.

Yes, they would experience a difference in the passage of time.

DaleSpam, maybe I don't understand entanglement. If the two clocks were entangled does this not mean whatever one clock does the other has to do?

No, not at all. That's not how entanglement works, but I'm afraid explaining it is not my specialty. Hit up the Quantum Physics forums and you should be able to find plenty of info on it.

 

[harrylin]

Thanks again Harrylin,
So I am not good at interpreting what is being said to me I think.
So what you and Drakkith are saying is that a sort of gravity-friction slows down the mechanism the clock runs by? Atom oscillations or however these clocks run, move faster away from the space-time warp caused by our massive earth? [..]

Quite the contrary.
While Drakkith thinks that you can already handle the complexity of two different time dilation effects, I suggested to stick to special relativity's time dilation - ignore the effects of gravitation on "time". You can do that if your objects stay roughly at the same altitude. Then you have for example the measurement situation that I described. No gravity effects and thus also no space-time warps, and no friction effects. Just plain time dilation from speed. If you try to learn one thing at a time, there is a chance that you may actually progress. Except of course if you are a genius, then you can perhaps handle everything at once.

I thought the faster you were going the slower time would tick. [..]

That is an imprecise formulation of what I told you twice with a precise description of measurements ...

Also what you ask next is too imprecise to know what you are asking. As a matter of fact, such imprecise descriptions result in misunderstandings such that two people can give contrary answers because they understand what you say inversely - compare posts and !

 

[harrylin]

Thanks again Harrylin,
So I am not good at interpreting what is being said to me I think.
So what you and Drakkith are saying is that a sort of gravity-friction slows down the mechanism the clock runs by? Atom oscillations or however these clocks run, move faster away from the space-time warp caused by our massive earth? [..]

Quite the contrary.
While Drakkith thinks that you can already handle the complexity of two different time dilation effects, I suggested to stick to special relativity's time dilation - ignore the effects of gravitation on "time". You can do that if your objects stay roughly at the same altitude. Then you have for example the measurement situation that I described. No gravity effects and thus also no space-time warps, and no friction effects. Just plain time dilation from speed. If you try to learn one thing at a time, there is a chance that you may actually progress. Except of course if you are a genius, then you can perhaps handle everything at once.

I thought the faster you were going the slower time would tick. [..]

That is an imprecise formulation of what I told you twice with a precise description of measurements ...

Also what you ask next is too imprecise to know what you are asking. As a matter of fact, such imprecise descriptions result in misunderstandings such that two people can give contrary answers because they understand what you say inversely - compare posts 3 and 5!

 

[questionator89]

hahaha i was comparing these posts and did find it confusing . What I understand now is that I don't understand this and need to read up a bit lol.
I am definitely not a genius.

So special relativity and time dilation. I will re-read what you have said, too.
Thanks man
Since you are answering so diligently though, could you explain why my questions about measuring time on other planets, and the whole Earth 2 getting more work done than earth1 people question?
It almost sounds like what I asked is possible...

 

[questionator89]

so upon further reading I am more confused. but I think it is a good thing.

So do we consider the Earth " at rest" ?
Based on what I have read is it accurate to say that if we could bring a golf ball to absolute zero (i know this isn't possible, I have seen the helium videos, very cool) that everything would age infinitely to the golf ball? assuming we don't unfreeze it.
Or inversely that if we could reach the speed of light time would stop?

I am going to be honest, the real reason I am asking is because I have a question about Drakes equation ( how many forms of intelligent life are in the universe) and a little part at the end of the explanation where you can multiply this by how many times a single planet could produce intelligent life.
I guess the theory is if a planet can produce one intelligent life form then why not another, or 100?
Anyways, I am wondering how accurate this little thing could be (i know not very accurate considering what it is trying to figure out) if they do not take the velocity of these objects (planets) into account over all the years.

 

[Dale]

DaleSpam, maybe I don't understand entanglement. If the two clocks were entangled does this not mean whatever one clock does the other has to do?

No. Entanglement is a quantum mechanical phenomenon. If you have some property which is quantum-mechanically uncertain, e.g. the polarization of some photon, and if you produce entangled particles, then if you measure the property you will find that the measured property on one is perfectly correlated with the measured property on the entangled partner.

However, each ensemble, on its own, is simply random. It is only when you get the information from the other ensemble that you can obtain the correlations. This is what prevents any instantaneous information transfer through entanglement.

 

[Drakkith]

so upon further reading I am more confused. but I think it is a good thing.

So do we consider the Earth " at rest" ?

For everyday little things we can consider the Earth to be at rest, but there is no "absolute" rest frame.

Based on what I have read is it accurate to say that if we could bring a golf ball to absolute zero (i know this isn't possible, I have seen the helium videos, very cool) that everything would age infinitely to the golf ball? assuming we don't unfreeze it.
Or inversely that if we could reach the speed of light time would stop?

What? Absolute zero has nothing to do with this, that is temperature.

I am going to be honest, the real reason I am asking is because I have a question about Drakes equation ( how many forms of intelligent life are in the universe) and a little part at the end of the explanation where you can multiply this by how many times a single planet could produce intelligent life.
I guess the theory is if a planet can produce one intelligent life form then why not another, or 100?
Anyways, I am wondering how accurate this little thing could be (i know not very accurate considering what it is trying to figure out) if they do not take the velocity of these objects (planets) into account over all the years.

Since we have only a single planet with a single intelligent species it is impossible to come up with any conclusions that aren't simply guesses.

 

[WannabeNewton]

The Earth is obviously at rest in its own rest frame by definition. The question is not whether one can consider it to be "at rest" because every massive object has a rest frame. The question is whether one can consider it an inertial frame, which one can approximately.

 

[questionator89]

Right, so when I said absolute zero i mean not moving, not even the atoms and electrons, no velocity.
sorry it wasn't the right word at all.
In many fields of physics you smart guys are spending a huge amount of time trying to make conclusions based on guesses though.
And based on the two theories that I am aware of life can start from extremophile bacteria on a meteor, or possibly in the presence of amino acids and a specific frequency or something.
In any case we are just guessing about planets at a certain distance from the start they orbit which potentially have water. These are the planets we would guess have an environment and atmosphere capable of sustaining life.
In any case my question isn't about the validity of the drake equation, that's why I didn't bring it up in the initial post.
WannabeNewton that is very interesting, it was something I was going to ask. Can we figure out how fast we are moving based on our time experience or something?
My big questions are, do other planets in our solar system experience time differently?
And my ultimate sci-fi curiosity is; if there was a planet in the goldy-locks zone or w.e its called which was inhabited by intelligent life and orbiting its star at a very slow velocity, would these guys be way ahead?
how far can we take this time dilation thing?

 

[Drakkith]

Right, so when I said absolute zero i mean not moving, not even the atoms and electrons, no velocity.
sorry it wasn't the right word at all.

The motion of the particles that make up an object do not affect whether that object experiences time dilation. It is only the relative motion of the object as a whole.

WannabeNewton that is very interesting, it was something I was going to ask. Can we figure out how fast we are moving based on our time experience or something?

We could if we had an absolute frame of reference that everything could be compared against. But there is not.

My big questions are, do other planets in our solar system experience time differently?

Sure. Both SR and GR effects will determine how quickly time passes anywhere, even on other planets. But this is no different than here on Earth. If I climb to the top of one of the nearby mountains I will be experiencing time at a faster rate than someone down at the base. These effects are always present, they are simply too small to detect without very precise clocks.

And my ultimate sci-fi curiosity is; if there was a planet in the goldy-locks zone or w.e its called which was inhabited by intelligent life and orbiting its star at a very fast velocity, would these guys be way ahead?
how far can we take this time dilation thing?

Even the fastest orbiting planets are still moving at a VERY VERY small percentage of the speed of light. As such, the differences in elapsed time per day would be measured in nanoseconds or microseconds even when comparing ourselves to the fastest planets.

 

[questionator89]

Awesome. Thank you Drakkith. That was the answer i was looking for.
But in the grand scheme those microseconds would add up to a huge difference in potential. I would guess.
Especially if say... we started from single celled organisms and "they" started as single cell organisms at the same time. But they stay in this state for 200 million years and we stay there for 300. or whatever a plausible number is.

And why do we need an absolute frame of reference? if we were measuring the difference between two planets say, couldn't we use any frame of reference as comparison? Even the Earth? just one specific clock?.
Couldnt we then say, this clock is moving at this rate and records this much time, this clock is moving at another rate and records this much time, then math'er on back to zero?

This must be annoying for u guys so I really appreciate the respones haha.
I try to explain things in my field of work to people who know nothing about it and it probably goes the way this thread is going most of the time.

 

[questionator89]

I should clarify;
I sort of merged two of my questions in that last post.
So measuring the difference between two planets.
Then measuring what rate of time we give to our planet (or solar system,galaxy, however it is grouped together)
compared to what a "0% the speed of light" bit of matter would experience in time.

 

[Drakkith]

Awesome. Thank you Drakkith. That was the answer i was looking for.
But in the grand scheme those microseconds would add up to a huge difference in potential. I would guess.
Especially if say... we started from single celled organisms and "they" started as single cell organisms at the same time. But they stay in this state for 200 million years and we stay there for 300. or whatever a plausible number is.

If my math is right, assuming we were 50 microseconds faster per day than they were, that's a difference of 1 part in 1.7 billion. IE it would take 1.7 billion days, or 4.6 million years, to develop 1 days worth of time difference.

And why do we need an absolute frame of reference? if we were measuring the difference between two planets say, couldn't we use any frame of reference as comparison? Even the Earth? just one specific clock?.
Couldnt we then say, this clock is moving at this rate and records this much time, this clock is moving at another rate and records this much time, then math'er on back to zero?

There is no zero, there are only comparisons.

I should clarify;
I sort of merged two of my questions in that last post.
So measuring the difference between two planets.
Then measuring what rate of time we give to our planet (or solar system,galaxy, however it is grouped together)
compared to what a "0% the speed of light" bit of matter would experience in time.

The passage of time in all inertial frames of reference, as measured from an observer in that frame, is always 1 second per second. You NEVER observe time dilation in your own frame. So you cannot measure your own time dilation without another frame to compare your clock against.

 

[questionator89]

If my math is right, assuming we were 50 microseconds faster per day than they were, that's a difference of 1 part in 1.7 billion. IE it would take 1.7 billion days, or 4.6 million years, to develop 1 days worth of time difference."

Well, that is pretty inconsequential.

There is no zero, there are only comparisons"

Well maybe there is no zero. But there has to be an upper limit of time rate for a super slow moving object. Can we make an object have so little inertia that it ages much faster?
What is getting to me is, what if the only reason that time doesn't pass extremely fast before us and we all just age, and everything around us ages until the sun dies out, is specifically BECAUSE we happen to be (and everything in view) speeding in a particular direction. as a universe.
But then I guess if this were true we could go in the opposite direction and time will go fast and then slow again.
In all these scenarios I am assuming we all have super fast spaceships.

that frame, is always 1 second per second. You NEVER observe time dilation in your own frame. So you cannot measure your own time dilation without another frame to compare your clock against.

Right, I can see how that would be. In every scenario I suggested there was a clock per area though. I am assuming there would be a way to check the difference between both these clocks too.
If we were to send a clock out of the atmosphere to stay in one place and have us pick it up on the way back around, what would the time difference be from what we experienced on earth?
if its a small number, does this mean that even as the clock sat there waiting for us to pick it up that it had a fast intertia that we can't perceive because we are all speeding in a direction?
It seems that by the assumption that if you reach the speed of light time will stop, then if you reach a zero inertia point the universe would age infinitely in front of you.

and does this mean to a photon time is nothing? like if the photon was sentient, it would be born then rather than experiencing the 8 mins we know the light takes to reach the Earth it is just instantly on the first thing it touches?
And i guess if it bounced it would seemingly be on all the objects it touched all at once.

 

[Drakkith]

Well maybe there is no zero. But there has to be an upper limit of time rate for a super slow moving object. Can we make an object have so little inertia that it ages much faster?

You're missing the point. It's all about reference frames. There will ALWAYS be some object traveling through space that could view you as traveling at 99%+ c. According to that object YOU are experiencing massive time dilation. And that object would be perfectly correct in saying that. There is no frame that has a special status as "the" frame to measure against to determine things like "least time dilation".

What is getting to me is, what if the only reason that time doesn't pass extremely fast before us and we all just age, and everything around us ages until the sun dies out, is specifically BECAUSE we happen to be (and everything in view) speeding in a particular direction. as a universe.
But then I guess if this were true we could go in the opposite direction and time will go fast and then slow again.
In all these scenarios I am assuming we all have super fast spaceships.

Everything within sight is either stationary or traveling at a VERY small fraction of c relative to your frame. That's why you don't notice any relativistic effects on a day to day basis.

If we were to send a clock out of the atmosphere to stay in one place and have us pick it up on the way back around, what would the time difference be from what we experienced on earth?
if its a small number, does this mean that even as the clock sat there waiting for us to pick it up that it had a fast intertia that we can't perceive because we are all speeding in a direction?

This is getting a little complicated. It's pretty much another version of the Twin Paradox. The Earth would be the twin that accelerates one way and then comes back. (At least I think so)

It seems that by the assumption that if you reach the speed of light time will stop, then if you reach a zero inertia point the universe would age infinitely in front of you.

We cannot reach the speed of light and we cannot assume that time would stop anyways. Our math simply doesn't work if you insert c as your velocity.

Also, consider the following. Let's say you go into space. You accelerate back and forth in EVERY direction in an attempt to find out in which direction you need to go in order to reach "zero inertia". So you go one way, and then another, and then another. Over and over again, in every possible direction. But you cannot find a direction in which to accelerate to cancel out your inertia. This is because you already have zero inertia in your own frame of reference and there is no "absolute" frame that determines the time dilation for everyone. It's all RELATIVE between objects based on their velocities with respect to each other.

and does this mean to a photon time is nothing? like if the photon was sentient, it would be born then rather than experiencing the 8 mins we know the light takes to reach the Earth it is just instantly on the first thing it touches?
And i guess if it bounced it would seemingly be on all the objects it touched all at once.

We cannot have a frame of reference in which we are traveling at the speed of light, so we cannot make conclusions about what an observer would experience at that speed.

 

[questionator89]

I can comprehend what is being said to me.
I think what is happening is I am not asking the question in the proper way.
And the question has changed as you have taught me more about how time dilation works.

So, an easy reference would be "earth time" which is 1 second per Earth second in my question.
But if we were to be going 65% c (is this how we represent the speed of light?) we would be experiencing time as for every 5 Earth seconds we feel 1 second. ( i don't know the math)
It seems that as you reach close to the speed of light ( this is my interpretation) that the discrepancy between what we perceive as time traveling fast, and what our original resting frame of perceived time, is a big difference.

But it doesn't work like this in the opposite direction? I intuitively feel this doesn't follow a normal pattern of physics (but i know nothing)

It would seem that, if we were to place a clock somewhere in space, which to us is seemingly not moving at all
that the difference would be something like 1.0000000123 seconds per Earth second get recorded.
This seems like a very small discrepancy.
It should be that we can decrease our velocity and inversely experience 5 seconds our time for every 1 Earth second, and see everything slowly meander about.

Like Drakkith said, we could be perceived from another object to be experiencing extreme time dilation. Its all about perception and reference points.

But obviously if we can't make something "rest" enough where it ages a considerable amount,while we experience 1 second per second does this imply a resting velocity? or inertia maybe is the right word?
This dimension has inertia built into it for a resting object to experience such a small discrepancy between units of time between a resting speed and a fast orbiting speed.

In many scenarios it is suggested that you could rip about in a spaceship for 5 years at an incredibly fast rate and return to Earth to see that they have aged 20 years. Is this wrong? not the math I have said because I honestly have no idea, but the concept in general?

It almost sounds like it is easier to slow time down by traveling incredibly fast, than to speed time up by traveling incredibly slow.

I don't know how much science fiction I read has any credibility to it at all, but could high density electromagnetism shield an object from inertia and cause it to age to infinity?
maybe forget this last question...

 

[questionator89]

Im going to move this to a new thread to try an get more responses.
So Drakkith and Harrylin if you are still interested in guiding me in this question please refer to the link that says
"Inertia and resting time rate"

 

[adrian_m]

The motion of the particles that make up an object do not affect whether that object experiences time dilation. It is only the relative motion of the object as a whole.

Hang on! That's not true. If an object as a whole experiences time dilation, then the motion of each particle that makes up the object must undergo the same time dilation. Otherwise it would violate the postulate 'the laws of physics are the same for all observers'.

 

[Drakkith]

Hang on! That's not true. If an object as a whole experiences time dilation, then the motion of each particle that makes up the object must undergo the same time dilation. Otherwise it would violate the postulate 'the laws of physics are the same for all observers'.

Of course. I wasn't saying anything to contradict that.

 

[WannabeNewton]

Hang on! That's not true. If an object as a whole experiences time dilation, then the motion of each particle that makes up the object must undergo the same time dilation. Otherwise it would violate the postulate 'the laws of physics are the same for all observers'.

This is incorrect. The constituent fluid elements making up a macroscopic object need not have the same individual motions, by any means, as the macroscopic object, viewed relative to some inertial frame. Your last sentence has no relevance whatsoever to the rest of your claim.

 

[adrian_m]

This is incorrect. The constituent fluid elements making up a macroscopic object need not have the same individual motions, by any means, as the macroscopic object, viewed relative to some inertial frame. Your last sentence has no relevance whatsoever to the rest of your claim.

Take a concrete example. You and I are both traveling inertially at different velocities.

I see your clock's 'second hand' tick over a second, moving at a certain angular velocity. The elapsed time by my clock is different than 1 second, so you have a time dilation with respect to me.

Is it possible that I will not necessarily see the 'atoms' in your second hand move at the same angular velocity, or preserve their positions with respect to each other at any time? That would only be possible if the physical laws in your frame were different than mine.

Unless proportions within a macroscopic object are preserved, it does not make much sense to say that a macroscopic object has 'a' time dilation.

 

[WannabeNewton]

Unless proportions within a macroscopic object are preserved, it does not make much sense to say that a macroscopic object has 'a' time dilation.

This is exactly why your claim above is incorrect. If we represent an extended body by a congruence of time-like curves and have an external observer who intersects a curve in the congruence at a given event on the curve then the external observer can boost to the instantaneous inertial frame of the fluid element described by said curve and the time dilation factors will be attributed on this individual level. Your claim was "If an object as a whole experiences time dilation, then the motion of each particle that makes up the object must undergo the same time dilation.". If you are talking about extended bodies and bringing into the picture the constituent fluid elements then your first clause by itself makes no sense.

A simple example is given by representing a rigidly rotating disk of angular velocity $\omega$ by a congruence of time-like curves. In order to boost from a background global inertial frame to the instantaneous rest frame of each fluid element in the congruence simultaneously, one uses the gamma factor $\gamma = \frac{1}{\sqrt{1 - \omega^2 r^2}}$ which clearly is different for fluid elements situated at different $r$ on the disk.

 

[phyti]

In the 'ideal' rest frame, there is no relative motion of the components, thus the fictional 'center of mass' moves at a constant speed. In the 'real world' rest frame the component motion varies on a molecular/atomic level (even if only due to thermal energy) for extremely short durations. There would be a mean rate of time dilation with small fluctuations. These would be insignificant at small fractions of c. I won't speculate on the significance at high fractions of c.

 

[WannabeNewton]

There is no rest frame for an entire time-like congruence. One can go to the rest frame of a given fluid element in the congruence and in this frame i.e. relative to this fluid element, neighboring fluid elements can have both angular and radial velocity.

 

[phyti]

...
It would seem that, if we were to place a clock somewhere in space, which to us is seemingly not moving at all
that the difference would be something like 1.0000000123 seconds per Earth second get recorded.
This seems like a very small discrepancy.
It should be that we can decrease our velocity and inversely experience 5 seconds our time for every 1 Earth second, and see everything slowly meander about.
...

Two observers A and B with different speeds, do not see time dilation for the other. Clocks are frequencies, therefore they observe doppler (frequency) shifts, positive if approaching, negative if receding. It's similar to the changing pitch of a sound passing by. The aging (accumulation of time) for each clock can only be done by a comparison of the two at a common location, as was shown in post 5 by harrylin.

If you pass by another clock, decreasing your speed each time, the maximum length tick will occur when you stop next to it. You can't go any slower, i.e., moving clocks will run slower, but never faster. In your above example, the difference would be zero, the clock reads 1.00.

 

[questionator89]

Ok I need to catch up a bit,
This is a lot of information...to add.
So firstly, I can't argue because you guys sound like you really know your stuff, But I am going to argue anyways. My lack of understanding can allow this right now.

Phyti you are not correct, I do know that. The one thing that is very apparent is that you ONLY see time dilation of another person. not yourself.
But you are correct I think that there is a doppler effect when moving directly away or directly toward an object.
so, I just want to tie in that it is mentioned a bunch in these science papers that, somehow, because light is affected by gravity, then so too is time effected by gravity, and at the center of a black hole time stops, and at the center of a white hole (big bang?)time speeds up.
So when we are looking at a star up in the sky and it is blinking, this is because of the doppler effect, because when it rotates one side moves towards you while the other one away, and in the middle it appears to shrink.
If I got something wrong here let me know.^^

So I mean, I can't be wrong. If we were to stop somethings momentum, it would age. lots.
All the writing says it.
I think what we are forgetting in all this, MAYBE, is that the sun is moving at:
"The sun takes 200 million years to orbit around the centre of the galaxy. It is located 26,ooo light years from the centre so its orbital circumference will be Pi x radius = 22/7 x 26,000 light years. Speed is expressed as distance per unit of time.

Hence, speed equals (22/7 x 26,000) light years per 200 million years. "

I got this off yahoo answers lol.

And I bet by the difference in time (if we could accurately compare clocks) would give us a speed in which our galaxy is moving.

U know.. on this level Einstein always said " when two objects are moving relative to each other, it is completely impossible for one object to tell who is moving. Both objects would assume they are standing still, and the other is moving. And both would be completely correct"

So if this whole thing I am talking about is even REAL, then couldn't we have our astronauts going in circles so they can meet up and compare clocks once in a blue moon?
If we weren't sure who was moving, the clock that counted way less units would definately clear the fog.

Anyways, let's not forget my question is, can we slow something down to make it age drastically?

 

[questionator89]

Phyti I just understood what you are saying lol. But you are still wrong because the seeing of the doppler effect is the same as the seeing of the time dilation I think

 

[ghwellsjr]

Phyti I just understood what you are saying lol. But you are still wrong because the seeing of the doppler effect is the same as the seeing of the time dilation I think

No he's not. There is approximately a two-to-one ratio between the Doppler factor and the Time Dilation factor at high speeds. You can't see Time Dilation, it's the result of taking what you see (Doppler) and applying Einstein's convention and doing some calculations.

 

[questionator89]

Well then does that make him right about his previous post? because I thought how it worked was, Jane on Earth sees Adams clock in his spaceship ticking slow, but to adam his clock is ticking normally and Jane's clock is ticking fast. Does this not imply that you can see time dilation in another object?

In any case we need to make this scenario so that we are using giant magical hourglasses (magical because the sand falls down, and the hourglass grows and accumulates sand at the top) and where our two objects in reference meet up once in a while at the same momentum to compare who has the bigger hourglass.

 

[questionator89]

u know what's interesting while I am sitting here pondering this I am thinking, the speed of light is exactly the speed of time somehow. and because it is constant this is why we experience time dilation?
I said earlier that I do not understand how light and time are connected. and Drakkith said this doesn't even make sense.
But why is light mentioned so much?

Drakkith you say that to any observer that the speed of light is always c. but that would mean if you were traveling at 80% the speed of light then the light you are seeing would have to be traveling at 180% of the speed of light for you to view it normally.

 

[Drakkith]

Phyti you are not correct, I do know that. The one thing that is very apparent is that you ONLY see time dilation of another person. not yourself.
But you are correct I think that there is a doppler effect when moving directly away or directly toward an object.

Of course. You must account for the doppler factor in order to propertly account for time dilation.

so, I just want to tie in that it is mentioned a bunch in these science papers that, somehow, because light is affected by gravity, then so too is time effected by gravity, and at the center of a black hole time stops, and at the center of a white hole (big bang?)time speeds up.

First, you are correct that gravity affects time. But be aware that what happens beyond the event horizon of a black hole is unknown. Most scientists don't believe there is actually a physical singularity at the center, instead believing that we simply don't know how physics works at such an extreme scale. Also, I don't think time speeds up in a white hole, but I'm not sure. Either way, one has never been observed and I don't think most people believe they actually exist.

So when we are looking at a star up in the sky and it is blinking, this is because of the doppler effect, because when it rotates one side moves towards you while the other one away, and in the middle it appears to shrink.
If I got something wrong here let me know.^^

Blinking? I don't know what you're getting at. If you are referring to the "twinkling" of stars in the sky, that's simply because of the light passing through layers of air with different densities. Also, rotating stars do not appear "shrunk", they are actually stretched out into an ellipsoidal shape from their rotation.

So I mean, I can't be wrong. If we were to stop somethings momentum, it would age. lots.
All the writing says it.

No, it does not. It says nothing of the sort. It says that objects with a velocity of zero compared to you does not experience any time dilation due to relative motion as viewed from your frame of reference. Another frame of reference may be moving relative to the first one and would indeed see time dilation for both of you.

And I bet by the difference in time (if we could accurately compare clocks) would give us a speed in which our galaxy is moving.

Moving compared to what? You need something to compare the overall frame of the galaxy against. One of the best frames, but by no means the only frame, is one at rest relative to the CMB.

U know.. on this level Einstein always said " when two objects are moving relative to each other, it is completely impossible for one object to tell who is moving. Both objects would assume they are standing still, and the other is moving. And both would be completely correct"

So if this whole thing I am talking about is even REAL, then couldn't we have our astronauts going in circles so they can meet up and compare clocks once in a blue moon?
If we weren't sure who was moving, the clock that counted way less units would definately clear the fog.

Ah, but you are missing a very important point here. In your situation you do NOT have inertial frames of reference. One has been accelerating, and in that case the rules are different.

Anyways, let's not forget my question is, can we slow something down to make it age drastically?

For the last time, no. It cannot be done.

u know what's interesting while I am sitting here pondering this I am thinking, the speed of light is exactly the speed of time somehow. and because it is constant this is why we experience time dilation?
I said earlier that I do not understand how light and time are connected. and Drakkith said this doesn't even make sense.
But why is light mentioned so much?

Light, AKA an electromagnetic wave propagating through space, is irrelevant. It is the SPEED of light in a vacuum that is the key. You could say that there happens to be a maximum speed limit in the universe and that light happens to travel at this speed because it is massless. But light itself, as an EM wave, has no connection with time. Sorry if I confused you.

Drakkith you say that to any observer that the speed of light is always c. but that would mean if you were traveling at 80% the speed of light then the light you are seeing would have to be traveling at 180% of the speed of light for you to view it normally.

80% compared to what? That's what you need to start thinking about. You MUST consider two frames of reference if you want to really grasp this. Trying to think about SR and time dilation using only 1 frame will NOT work. You have to say 80% c in relation to another frame and then look at what both frames will see and calculate.
Read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_d...nce_of_time_dilation_due_to_relative_velocity

 

[questionator89]

Of course. You must account for the doppler factor in order to propertly account for time dilation.
First, you are correct that gravity affects time. But be aware that what happens beyond the event horizon of a black hole is unknown. Most scientists don't believe there is actually a physical singularity at the center, instead believing that we simply don't know how physics works at such an extreme scale. Also, I don't think time speeds up in a white hole, but I'm not sure. Either way, one has never been observed and I don't think most people believe they actually exist.
Blinking? I don't know what you're getting at. If you are referring to the "twinkling" of stars in the sky, that's simply because of the light passing through layers of air with different densities. Also, rotating stars do not appear "shrunk", they are actually stretched out into an ellipsoidal shape from their rotation.

When I say blinking I mean one side is red and one side is blue spectrum because of the doppler effect. When I say shrunk I meant just in the middle because when viewing an object in motion this object appears to shrink, but it shrinks so uniformly that if you were inside the object nothing would change inside to you but the world outside would stretch.

No, it does not. It says nothing of the sort. It says that objects with a velocity of zero compared to you does not experience any time dilation due to relative motion as viewed from your frame of reference. Another frame of reference may be moving relative to the first one and would indeed see time dilation for both of you.

Objects at 0 would, by the pattern we are following , experience an infinite amount of time accumulation I think.
and objects at the speed of light do not experience time.
If a photon were sentient and were in a universe of mirrors that ended in a brick wall, the photon would experience hitting all the mirrors and the brick wall simultaneously at the speed of reality.
To us at Earth momentum this photon would take X amount of time to travel this distance. A very long time. Let's not forget that it takes light 1.03 seconds to reach the moon from us and 8 mins to reach the sun. at Earth speed.

Moving compared to what? You need something to compare the overall frame of the galaxy against. One of the best frames, but by no means the only frame, is one at rest relative to the CMB.

I am not sure what you mean by the CMB.
but What would you consider at rest?
our solar system is traveling around the galaxy at an extremely fast rate. We put our hourglass "at rest" behind our Earth orbit, go all the way around the sun, and pick it up on the other side, we will see that this clock has experienced 1.00034 seconds for every Earth seconds.
But don't forget its traveling at the speed our solar system is going.
This is not at rest.
We would have to leave any warp in space time that would drag us along, and really stop moving.
If our galaxy were moving it would probably appear to zoom away from us if we were at rest.

Ah, but you are missing a very important point here. In your situation you do NOT have inertial frames of reference. One has been accelerating, and in that case the rules are different.

what you are saying here is exactly why you believe that when we drop something off in space, but still in our solar system, it appears to be at rest.

For the last time, no. It cannot be done.

I get that you don't have an inertial frame of reference if you weren't accelerating or slowing down.
But close to the speed of light, or maybe not even that close, light is warped,stretched and curved because you are seeing it travel slower.
And i really believe if we had a clock that counted time accumulation rather than a continuous cycle from 1-12, we would be able to compare time accumulation between different momentums
and figure out how fast it is moving compared to a rest point.

Light, AKA an electromagnetic wave propagating through space, is irrelevant. It is the SPEED of light in a vacuum that is the key. You could say that there happens to be a maximum speed limit in the universe and that light happens to travel at this speed because it is massless. But light itself, as an EM wave, has no connection with time. Sorry if I confused you.

Yet it has the connection to time where if you were to reach the speed of light time would stop for you? and at close to the speed of light everything around you ages huge while you feel nothing different than one second per second?
I feel like you don't think I am understanding basic principles about how light slows down when it is passing through a medium, etc. I have read that we can bring sodium gas to close to absolute zero and light will be going only a few miles per hour through this medium.
The questions I am asking are really about momentum and time.
electromagnetic wave speed just happens to be the universal speed limit. for time as well. right?

If we follow the pattern, then at rest you should experience infinite time accumulation.

80% compared to what? That's what you need to start thinking about. You MUST consider two frames of reference if you want to really grasp this. Trying to think about SR and time dilation using only 1 frame will NOT work. You have to say 80% c in relation to another frame and then look at what both frames will see and calculate.
Read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_d...nce_of_time_dilation_due_to_relative_velocity

K man. when I say 80% of c i mean compared to 100% of c...if you are traveling at 80% of what the max speed is, how much time would you accumulate compared to what we accumulate on an average day here on earth.
There is always a frame of reference that I am using and I don't understand why you keep saying compared to what?
You can't truly believe that at "rest" a clock will only experience slightly over 1 second per Earth second.
So going fast we can easily explain away that a fast person may only experience 1 second for every 10 seconds an Earth person feels.
But you can't believe that a slow person could experience 10 seconds for every 1 second and Earth person feels.
Why would the pattern stop?
Using time accumulation compared to 1 second per Earth second, we should be able to compare something that we can gauge the age of if left alone, and use math to figure out how much slower it would need to go to be at rest

the faster you go the slower time goes, the slower you go the faster time goes.

 

[questionator89]

It can't be true that time goes slower the closer you get to the speed of light, but does not speed up the farther away from the speed of light you get.

 

[Drakkith]

I'm sorry, but you simply don't understand the basic principles of Special Relativity and I don't think I can explain them to you. If you truly would like to understand then there are plenty of resources online. You can even read Einstein's original paper on SR. Everything is explained.

 

[BMW]

Furthermore if i made a bar of copper+entangled duplicate, sent one with the clock, then put an electrical current through the one I kept with me, what would happen to the spaceship copper?
Does this create entangled electrons from a spooky distance?

Why would the electrons introduced by the current get entangled to the distant copper bar? The electrons from the current are not necessarily entangled with anything, so no, it wouldn't create entangled electrons "from a spooky distance."

 

[questionator89]

yah i was told this about 60 posts ago BMW but thanks
what we are talking about in this thread is much different

 

[ghwellsjr]

Well then does that make him right about his previous post? because I thought how it worked was, Jane on Earth sees Adams clock in his spaceship ticking slow, but to adam his clock is ticking normally and Jane's clock is ticking fast. Does this not imply that you can see time dilation in another object?

I don't see anything wrong with phyti's previous post (#35). As I mentioned, the Doppler factor can be close to double the Time Dilation factor when objects are receding from each other and as they are approaching each other, the inverses apply. So as an object approaches and passes an observer, its observed Doppler factor will start high (positive, as phyti says) and end up low (negative as phyti says) which means at some point it will be equal to the Time Dilation factor for the rest frame of the observer. If the object is in "orbit" around the observer, maintaining a constant distance from him, the Doppler factor is equal to the value of the Time Dilation factor in the inertial rest frame of the observer but in other inertial rest frames they are not equal. As I keep saying, Time Dilation is a frame dependent effect and observers can't know what frame you are choosing to put them in. The Doppler factor is not frame dependent and is the same no matter what frame you use to describe a scenario.

In any case we need to make this scenario so that we are using giant magical hourglasses (magical because the sand falls down, and the hourglass grows and accumulates sand at the top) and where our two objects in reference meet up once in a while at the same momentum to compare who has the bigger hourglass.

What is magical about an hourglass in which the sand falls down? Or is it magical because it works in the absence of gravity the same as it would on the surface of the earth?

 

[questionator89]

Yeah I mean magical because of the absence of gravity.

I have found yet another conundrum with this theory.
I was using a time dilation calculator and found out that moving at 98.4% the speed of light you will experience a time dilation difference of 2.7 seconds. meaning that you just counted one second, but a "stationary object" ( this is the word the calculator used) experiences 2.7 seconds.
The other time dilation calculator I used came up with a much different answer.0.10903 seconds pass at this speed for every 1 second for a stationary object.

K fine, but here's what's weird with that.

at the speed of light time stops? this means that a photon could travel in one direction for infinity years and never experience one second pass.
Don't u think that at 99% of the speed of light time would barely barely be passing at all?

Instead we see that it passes 1/3 as fast or 1/10 as fast?
Is there some exponential loss of time accumulation after 99%?

It seems like either time dilation must be much more extreme than our math allows
Or to stop time we would have to be going much faster than the speed of light.

 

[Drakkith]

Yeah I mean magical because of the absence of gravity.

I have found yet another conundrum with this theory.
I was using a time dilation calculator and found out that moving at 98.4% the speed of light you will experience a time dilation difference of 2.7 seconds. meaning that you just counted one second, but a "stationary object" ( this is the word the calculator used) experiences 2.7 seconds.
The other time dilation calculator I used came up with a much different answer.0.10903 seconds pass at this speed for every 1 second for a stationary object.

Yes, because you are traveling, with respect to that frame, at 98.4% c, and thus are time dilated.

at the speed of light time stops? this means that a photon could travel in one direction for infinity years and never experience one second pass.

Trying to imagine what time is like at c is pointless. Our math does not allow us to set a frame of reference at c, and thus we cannot try to make predictions about what will happen. Any answer would be pure guesswork/speculation. If you really want to, feel free to imagine that time stops at c. It makes no difference.

Don't u think that at 99% of the speed of light time would barely barely be passing at all?

Instead we see that it passes 1/3 as fast or 1/10 as fast?
Is there some exponential loss of time accumulation after 99%?

Here's the graph:

As you can see, the amount of time dilation (the Y axis) increases rapidly when we get very close to c. (X axis is in fractions of c)

 

[Dale]

lets not forget my question is, can we slow something down to make it age drastically?

No. The slowest it can go is 0, and then it ages normally.