Can we distort time?

[jimharri]

Don't know so much about "distorting", but there's a certain organisation on the outskirts of Manchester that has the ability to stretch time when it needs to.

 

[Nascent Blues]

Not only can we distort time, you do it literally every second of every day without realising it.

Whenever you travel, no matter how slowly, your body is actually subject to the laws of special relativity. When an object moves it experiences 'time dilation'. That is, the faster something travels, the more time seems to slow down in its own reference frame. This is a natural consequence of having a constant speed of light. You wouldn't notice the difference as your biological functions work at the same pace, but when you stop moving the world around you has 'experienced' more time passing than you have.

Therefore technically, if you walk to the shops, and your wife has stayed at home on the sofa, by the time you get back your wife has actually aged ever so slightly more than you have. It's obviously not even noticeable on every day scales, and only really comes into effect when you travel significantly fast.

I know this isn't what you were getting at, but hey I'm bored.

Edit: TCIB beat me to it. Like lightning that fella.

Have no idea about this, but wouldn't the earth's speed (traveling through space) play a part? For instance, would the speed of the earth's trajectory counterbalance or supersede an individual's speed (if that's the right phrase) on earth, if the earth is actually moving faster than both individuals? Love this stuff but I'm thick as fuck when any actual 'understanding' is involved. My brain isn't designed for it!

TCIB has covered it but I'll attempt to clarify things a little. Relativity is all about looking at things in 'relative' frames of reference. That's where the name comes from. The theory is useful when you're using it to compare the differences between two perspectives.

Therefore in the example I give above of one person staying on the sofa and the other going to the shops the rotation and orbit of the Earth isn't significant because it is something that's acting equally on both the people in the scenario. It's the differences between the two 'observers' that we're interested in.

So to answer your question, it depends. It wouldn't matter in the example I've given but if we're using it to compare perspectives for things like spacecraft and we're sending out instructions from base here on Earth then absolutely the rotation and orbit of the Earth is extremely relevant. This comes back to TCIBs point that he touched on. Because of the movement of the Earth we need to account for time dilation when sending pinpoint signals for GPS. It makes the difference of fractions of a second but it has to be that precise or it wouldn't work.

Hopefully that makes sense?

Cheers. I just wish my brain would digest this sort of stuff a bit more efficiently!

 

[SkyBlueFlux]

Have no idea about this, but wouldn't the earth's speed (traveling through space) play a part? For instance, would the speed of the earth's trajectory counterbalance or supersede an individual's speed (if that's the right phrase) on earth, if the earth is actually moving faster than both individuals? Love this stuff but I'm thick as fuck when any actual 'understanding' is involved. My brain isn't designed for it!

TCIB has covered it but I'll attempt to clarify things a little. Relativity is all about looking at things in 'relative' frames of reference. That's where the name comes from. The theory is useful when you're using it to compare the differences between two perspectives.

Therefore in the example I give above of one person staying on the sofa and the other going to the shops the rotation and orbit of the Earth isn't significant because it is something that's acting equally on both the people in the scenario. It's the differences between the two 'observers' that we're interested in.

So to answer your question, it depends. It wouldn't matter in the example I've given but if we're using it to compare perspectives for things like spacecraft and we're sending out instructions from base here on Earth then absolutely the rotation and orbit of the Earth is extremely relevant. This comes back to TCIBs point that he touched on. Because of the movement of the Earth we need to account for time dilation when sending pinpoint signals for GPS. It makes the difference of fractions of a second but it has to be that precise or it wouldn't work.

Hopefully that makes sense?

Cheers. I just wish my brain would digest this sort of stuff a bit more efficiently!

The problem is that this stuff isn't intuitive and the only way you can come to such a weird conclusion and really understand it is by doing the maths behind it. Just having somebody explain it to you in English is an exercise in how much you can confuse somebody.

Fortunately, unlike a lot of the weirder stuff in quantum mechanics, special relativity is really quite simple and eloquent mathematically. If you know how triangles work then you can pretty much figure it out from there. I'd recommend reading up on it if you get any spare time. Forgive the patronising name of the website but this is actually a pretty good place to start: Link

 

[Blue Smarties]

Get some ketamine up your beak and ask yourself the same question.

 

[dronefromsector7g]

So what is it?

 

[Blue Smarties]

So what is it?

Minutes can seem like hours. It was the morning we were playing at Anfield. It was a few minutes before 10:00 when we realised the time; if we got our heads down we wouldn't wake up for the match so we decided to carry on going. What seemed like hours went by so we checked the time as kick off must be coming up. Turns out it was only 10:05 and what seemed like hours had been minutes.

That was the longest wait I've ever had. Thinking about it, I wish I was still waiting so I didn't have to witness Coutinho snatch it again.

 

[crazyg]

Time certainly seemed to stand still when Balotelli passed the ball to Aguero on 13/5/2012 at about 93:17 on the clock.

 

[TangerineSteve17]

In physics yeah apparently. The 4th dimension. As just a bloke on the street though, I'd suppose it's all down to mind and perception. My 10 minutes won't be the same as your 10 minutes. So time travels at a rate relative to perception.

One thing is for sure though, apart from pain, boredom and long sleepless nights, time travels too fast and before you know it, it's over.

 

[jimharri]

Time certainly seemed to stand still when Balotelli passed the ball to Aguero on 13/5/2012 at about 93:17 on the clock.

For 3 seconds in your house, I'm guessing!

[bigimg]http://i.imgur.com/DaJ9dGDh.jpg[/bigimg]

 

[dronefromsector7g]

So what is it?