I Explaining Extreme Spacetime Curvature & Time Physics

[deuce123]

Can someone please explain to me why time drastically slows for anyone near an extremely curves spacetime. I see it as the flow of time almost becomes slowed due to extreme curvature, what can explain this? What do physicists "see" time as? Also, I'm not entirely educated on this topic but I almost imagine as the flow of time being stress lines like in materials, and when it gets impacted the stress lines come together closer. This i see as time being bundled together, which i guess slows it down. This might be totally off, but it was just in my mind and want too see what the representation of time actually is. Thank you everyone

 

[Orodruin]

Time dilation is not directly related to curvature so the premise of the question is misleading. Proper time for an observer in relativity is essentially the length of the observer's world line. Making an analogy to "normal" surfaces, there exists the possibility that a line that goes along a curved part of the surface is shorter or longer than a path that does not. The actual math will tell you which it is.

 

[deuce123]

Time dilation is not directly related to curvature so the premise of the question is misleading. Proper time for an observer in relativity is essentially the length of the observer's world line. Making an analogy to "normal" surfaces, there exists the possibility that a line that goes along a curved part of the surface is shorter or longer than a path that does not. The actual math will tell you which it is.

Thank you, will i be able to understand the mathematics of it if I've completed calculus, but not linear algebra and diff. eq? Also if you can, can you send me some of the math too check out

 

[Orodruin]

What you need to understand to understand the mathematics behind GR is calculus on manifolds. I would strongly suggest learning linear algebra and differential equations before picking that up. You should find a basic introduction to the mathematics in any GR textbook.

 

[phinds]

Can someone please explain to me why time drastically slows for anyone near an extremely curves spacetime.

It's not clear but you may be under a sever misapprehension here. Time does NOT slow, drastically or otherwise, for someone deep in a gravity well. What DOES happen is that if you go into a deep gravity well and come out again, your clock, which will have ticked away at one second per second for the whole trip, will have experienced fewer ticks than if you had just stayed put. When you are in the gravity well, someone back where you started sees you as time dilated and when you return, you have experience differential aging. So YOU don't see any slowing due to gravitational time dilation, only others see it.

 

[deuce123]

It's not clear but you may be under a sever misapprehension here. Time does NOT slow, drastically or otherwise, for someone deep in a gravity well. What DOES happen is that if you go into a deep gravity well and come out again, your clock, which will have ticked away at one second per second for the whole trip, will have experienced fewer ticks than if you had just stayed put. When you are in the gravity well, someone back where you started sees you as time dilated and when you return, you have experience differential aging. So YOU don't see any slowing due to gravitational time dilation, only others see it.

Mind blown. Thank you everyone for replying!

 

[stoomart]

Proper time for an observer in relativity is essentially the length of the observer's world line.

I'm trying to understand "why" gravitational time dilation occurs heuristically, and your post pointed me in the direction of geodesics around a gravity well. Would you say this plot demonstrates the differences in the length of world lines around a massive object?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_well#/media/File:GravityPotential.jpg

 

[Orodruin]

No.

First of all, that is just a plot of a surface with some coordinate grid lines. Second, you must look at world line lengths in space-time, not in space. GR is a theory that deals with the curvature (and other properties) of space-time. It is insufficient to just consider curved space.