What Time Is It? An Exploration of Time Dilations & Relativity

[notadoctor]

What time is it?

I have smart friends. Maybe ya'll can help. I want to know what time it is. Sounds easy doesn't it? But wait, there's more. Things that are moving experience time dilation i.e. observing a ship moving close to the speed of light, while the observer might watch the ship for a year the crew would experience way less time. The faster you go the slower time passes for you. This happens with satellites in orbit as well with gravity. So the Earth revolves around the sun, our solar system revolves around the galactic core, and our galaxy revolves around the universe's center. What is the time for some one standing in the center of the universe?

I'm just an average guy thank you for reading this.

Update: If some thing is stationary, as close to stopped as possible, and has been observing Earth from the beginning of Earth (say 5 billion years-us) how long has the something experienced? Or that previously mentioned something is observing us for an hour to it how long did we experience?

 

[A.T.]

center of the universe

I don't think there is such a thing.

 

[HallsofIvy]

The first thing you will have to do is tell what you mean by "the center of the universe"! You see to be under the impression that there is some point "motionless" point you are calling "the center of the universe". The whole point of "relativity" is that there is no such point. You can only talk about speed of an object relative to some other object.

 

[Nugatory]

What is the time for some one standing in the center of the universe?

There is no special point that you can call the center of the universe, so there is no person or place whose time is better or more real or more meaningful than somewhere else.

 

[jedishrfu]

Welcome to PF!

The time is now and the place is here, beyond that we can't say much more.

As you've noticed time is relative to the observer and may be different for different observers. While we know about the motion of the Earth relative to the sun and the sun relative to the galaxy and the galaxy relative to other galaxies, we find there is never an absolute place from which we can measure time.

In that sense then your question while good is quite meaningless.

You can read more about time here though:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time

 

[phinds]

The faster you go the slower time passes for you.

Absolutely not true. Others may see you as having as slowed time but for you time passes at one second per second regardless of what others think.

Consider this. You, right now as you read this, are MASSIVELY time dilated according to an accelerated particle at CERN, you are mildly time dilated according to some galaxy 5billion light years from here, and you are not time dilated at all according to the chair you are sitting in. Do you feel slowed down to any of these degrees? Do you feel slowed down to all of them at the same time? That would be a good trick.