anven said:
Summary:: Listen to a record from a planet with extreme gravity
Hi everyone. I am new here and have a question that has been bothering me for a few days. Maybe you guys can help me out. Suppose a band gives a 60 minute concert on a planet with extremely strong gravity. This concert is recorded on site on a cassette, which has space for 60 minutes. Then a spaceship brings this cassette to me on earth. Would I notice anything unusual when I listen to the cassette? Thank you very much for your help.
Interesting question. It's not clear what effect the extreme gravity would have on the instruments, vocal chords or hearing of the band members. Even if they are playing in a special room that is pressurised to the Earth's atmospheric pressure, there is still the real (extreme) force from the floor of the room. At the very least, they will be moving sluggishly and walking may be difficult. The band members may be flat on the floor and unable to stand. Let alone pick up a guitar!
But, I guess the question is really about the nature of time and gravitational time dilation in particular. So, we need an experiment where the physical effect of the force from the ground is not relevant.
Let's assume that we have a clock (e.g. a cesium clock or perhaps a simple quartz crystal watch would do) that is not mechanically affected by the large local force. Then, we use that to time something and record it on a device that likewise is not affected by the local force. This may be as simple as recording a video on your phone.
When the phone is taken back to Earth and the video replayed, then it will play at normal speed. Perhaps a video of the atomic clock ticking away! In other words, a video that was, say, 1 minute long on the planet and recorded an atomic clock display for a minute will take a minute to play on Earth and the atomic clock in the video will be running normally.
If, however, each tick of the atomic clock is transmitted live from the planet by radio signal, say, then the atomic clock will be measured to be running slow by clocks on Earth.
What this highlights is that gravitational time dilation is not a local phenomenon whereby time "really" runs slower; but a global relativistic phenomenon, where a clock deep in a gravitational potential well will be measured to run slow by a clock not so deep in the well.
In that sense all clocks capable of keeping time locally are running normally. And, it's only the global curvature of spacetime that creates the asymmetry in measurements of time at different locations.