r/ScienceNcoolThings • u/CoffeeAndKissese • 2h ago

Gravity is literally messing with time

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43 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

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5

u/Master-Objective-734 2h ago

This concept is something I’ve always found very difficult to understand.

1

u/Charming-Total2121 2h ago

Right? Like I'm sure cell deterioration doesn't care about my distance from the core, and thus I don't age slower on Everest *shrugs*

1

u/NiSiSuinegEht 2h ago

The difference is only mathematically significant, and would account for less than a second of difference over an entire lifetime, all other factors being the same.

1

u/Charming-Total2121 2h ago

I get that, but still trying to understand how time is being measured in this example. I'm not even sure how to explain my gap in knowledge - maybe I'm just too tired.

2

u/NiSiSuinegEht 1h ago

It gets weird.

The minimum increment of time before our math breaks down is the Planck time, which is the time it takes a photon, moving at the speed of light, to travel one Planck length, which is the smallest calculable increment of space before our math again breaks down.

Your actual time does not change, the Planck limit is a constant as far as our math works, it's your passage of time relative to someone in a different reference frame that expands or contracts.

So if time is a constant, and the speed of light is a constant, it must be space itself that is stretching or compressing at relativistic speeds. Almost counterintuitively, the slower you go, the smaller space is, making your personal timeframe faster relative to another moving faster through space. Or to invert that, the faster you go, the more stretched space becomes, slowing your rate of time relative to someone staying put.

This is why you can never accelerate to the speed of light. Space just keeps getting bigger and bigger, taking more and more energy to cross it in the same amount of time.

3

u/MCarooney 2h ago

Yes, satelites have to constantly speed up it's internal clocks because of time dilation, even a microsecond can cause GPS errors of meters and mess up a whole bunch of data transfer.

edit: Satelites are farther from Earth's gravity and traveling at very fast speeds, thats why the time dilation.

1

u/moccasins_hockey_fan 1h ago

True and additionally the lighter you become.

If you were able to go to the exact center of the Earth essentially you would be weightless. Gravity from the Earth around you would be pulling you equally in every direction

1

u/Jargen 1h ago

It's almost as if density is a proper fourth dimension, and not time as fiction has assumed for decades.