A question of why time dilates and what is described by it

[Orodruin]

Wasn't suggesting it's "science" or doable, only trying to frame a thought experiment. Q: given I view your clock flashing slower, and you mine, whose does a 3rd frame's observer view as running slower?

And the answer is that it depends on the state of motion of the two of you relative to that observer.

 

[Herman Trivilino]

To use a metaphore, one can describe the Earth's orbit using pure math describing it as an ellipses. But that math alone can't tell you why Earth moves that way.

Agreed. But let's see where this takes us ...

Pure math won't reveal the existence of gravity in this, instead, you need to expand your view and start looking at other aspects of Earth and other celestial bodies, namely the sun, or have some other insight to figure out gravity. In this, gravity is part of why Earth has that orbit and not some other orbit.

Gravity can be used to explain why the orbit is an ellipse by pointing to two particular properties of gravity. One, that the force is directed towards the sun and two that the strength of the force is inversely proportional to the square of the distance to the sun.

So in one sense something is accomplished because we've used math to explain how ellipses follow from gravity. But in another sense we are no further along because we are still left with your original query. Namely, why does gravity have that particular direction and that particular dependence on distance to the sun. And we can go on with another explanation that uses math to explain how that follows from something deeper. But we are then still left with wondering why the deeper thing is true.

Likewise, relativity is the math of the result, it tells us how to predict things, but it doesn't tell us why things happen that way, and that is what I'm wondering.

Special relativity is more than just math. It's a complete explanation of, for example, time dilation. And it explains, using math, how time dilation follows from the two postulates.

So if you want to know why time dilates it's because of the two postulates: equivalence of inertial reference frames and invariance of light speed.

You are of course still left wondering why all reference frames are equivalent and why the speed of light is the same in all reference frames. Those things can be explained in terms of deeper reasons, but that has nothing to do with special relativity itself. Special relativity makes no attempt at explaining why the postulates are true, it simply explains how things will behave given the validity of the postulates. and it's the experimental verification of those conclusions that gives us faith in the validity of those postulates.

There is no known experiment you can perform to distinguish between a state of rest and a state of uniform motion. That seems to be a fundamental feature of our universe and the fact that time dilates is a consequence.

 

[phinds]

Wasn't suggesting it's "science" or doable, only trying to frame a thought experiment.

Yes, but the problem is that framing actual physics scenarios using fiction is likely to lead you to misunderstandings and wrong answers. Best to stick with reality.