Space expansion vs. time speeding up

[miselaineeous]

Hi! I've been reading these forums off and on for a year or so, and finally registered!

There have been other threads here on space expansion vs. time speeding up, but I have some questions that weren't addressed.

Background:

I was told by a notable astrophysicist, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, that since space is expanding, time might be speeding up on the whole. I believe this is due to matter being thinned out. I've also read compatible ideas about time "tending toward zero" if we rewind the clock to the early winks of the universe. This kind of thing begs more questions that it answers though.

BACKGROUND:

Can anyone tell me if I'm thinking about any of this the right way? Then I have a couple actual questions below.

Like everyone else, I don't understand what we can compare "time on the whole" to. But anyway, I see time as a "bumpy" complex pattern that reflects gravity and velocity, at every quantum of space. Space ticks away more slowly next to a massive object as compared to someone floating around in a near vacuum, etc, but I have to assume we don't draw the line at such extremes. What about a trillion watches next to a trillion slightly different sized specks of dust in interstellar space? In other words, isn't every quantum of space (or speck of matter?? How should I be thinking about this??) moving at it's own speed of time because it's sitting in an ever-so-slightly different gravitational "well"?

If I could somehow graph a snapshot of a "chunk of time" from my perspective on Earth at some specific time intervals on my watch, and maybe color every quantum of space a different color according to how fast or slow its time is ticking in relation to mine (similar to how we choose colors to graph the mandelbrot set), surely it would look a lot like the patterns of matter itself.

But time ALSO ticks more slowly for observers who are zooming through space as compared to someone sitting still. So wouldn't my colorful time-graph look even more complicated than simply reflecting mass at every point, since we have to take the velocity of matter into account as well?

Then again, if we were to graph the gravitational pattern of the universe over the same period of time, it would take motion into account too. So therefor my graph of time would look exactly like a graph of the gravity wells. Anyway, that was kind of a weird side note. I would welcome comments on that.

QUESTION: I've read that time "emerged" (sped up) after the big bang due to mass thinning out (like I mentioned above) and I've read that it is also due to the motion that started happening after the big bang (expansion due to inertia). Does the accelerated expansion (due to dark energy) also have an affect on time?

If dark energy has no effect on time, then I think I understand. That means expansion (sans dark energy acceleration) has little or no effect on time-changing anymore since it's pretty steady (and if anything, the inertia is "slowing down" if we subtracted the dark energy effect), so mostly just the thinning of matter is causing time to speed up.

If dark energy DOES have an affect on time, due to the faster velocities of galaxies speeding away from each other, then I'm confused. Doesn't faster velocity slow time down relative to slower velocity?

universal expansion = less mass/gravity (per inch) AND more velocity
less mass/gravity = faster time
more velocity = slower time

That seems contradictory.

 

[Chronos]

Mass and velocity are unrelated save by gravitational redshift. But these are field effects, not classical physics [rulers and clocks]. Field effects are governed by higher order mathematics and quantum field theory. It is complicated. In Einstein's field equations you need energy momentum to make it work. Mass is not well behaved under this constraint.