Does accelerating expansion affect the passage of time?

silentbob14 · Apr 12, 2010

Does the accelerating expansion of the universe has any influence on the passage of time? In simple words, is the time literally going faster (or maybe slower)?

bcrowell · Apr 12, 2010

silentbob14 said:

Does the accelerating expansion of the universe has any influence on the passage of time? In simple words, is the time literally going faster (or maybe slower)?

Compared to what?

JulianM · Apr 12, 2010

Compared to when I was 18 :-D
It was too tempting not to say this

bcrowell · Apr 12, 2010

JulianM said:

Compared to when I was 18 :-D
It was too tempting not to say this

:-)

But seriously, maybe my #2 was not really clear. I guess the obvious answer would be "compared to how fast it was going before." The problem with this answer is that there is no measurement that can tell you how fast time is flowing now compared to how fast it was flowing in an earlier epoch of cosmic history. Therefore the question is meaningless. General covariance formalizes this: you can put your time coordinate through any nonlinear transformation you like, and there are no observable effects.

Does accelerating expansion affect the passage of time?

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