High School The Relationship Between Gravity and Time

[Thomas Clark]

As gravity increases time slows, hypothetically if you were at a point with extremely low gravity would time run any faster?

 

[PeroK]

As gravity increases time slows, hypothetically if you were at a point with extremely low gravity would time run any faster?

The effects of gravitational time dilation, which is what you are asking about, are very small in the solar system. The further you go from a gravitational source, the less the effect. If you were far away from the Sun, Earth, or any other planet, then your time would run relatively faster than time on the surface of the Earth. It would be about 2 seconds in your lifetime. That's the maximum, as that assumes you've gone far enough for the solar system's gravity to be negligible.

 

[Ibix]

In addition to PeroK's point, time dilation isn't something you can measure at one place. You have to compare two clocks and see which one is running slow. So when people say "time runs slow in a gravitational field" they are actually saying "...compared to a clock further away".

We are nowhere near a strong gravitational field, so there's very little you can do to make a clock tick much faster than one on Earth. The GPS clocks do have a correction for the effect, so it can be important, but you'll never see it without precise experiments.

 

[Orodruin]

It should be pointed out that gravitational time dilation depends on the gravitational potential, not the strength of the gravitational field. The gravitational field at the center of the Earth is zero, but it has the more gravitational time dilation than the surface.