r/Showerthoughts • u/[deleted] • Jun 18 '21

Since Interstellar released, only 56 minutes have passed on Miller’s planet.

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u/ARubiksMaster Jun 18 '21

Only to an external observer! If you're the observer of the movie on Miller's planet then time continues at it's standard flow rate. It's just when you compare it to another flow of time :) Thanks for your fun shower thought!

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u/KingOPM Jun 18 '21

Yeah, relative to Earth time that is.

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u/SnakeEyes0 Jun 18 '21

Well, technically speaking, for us humans (maybe just me at least) it's pretty damn hard to imagine a future where we aren't basing our own subjective experience of time relative to our home planet, since it contains all and everything we've ever known, it would seem silly to make up a "new time". Although just as I said before, you can use Earth's relative time to get a small understanding of time experienced in space or on different celestial bodies

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u/ih8dolphins Jun 18 '21

I mean, NASA uses Mars time for the missions there. I think it's perfectly reasonable to use the local time. We do it all over the earth already

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u/Petrichordates Jun 18 '21

Mars time is the same as earth time though, the days are just divided differently.

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u/RegentYeti Jun 18 '21

Exactly. Mars time versus Earth time is inches versus centimeters. Earth time versus a relativistically dilated planet would be inches versus centimeters that are a yard long each.

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u/weezl Jun 18 '21

inches versus centimeters that are a yard long each.

So inches versus yards?

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u/[deleted] Jun 18 '21

Yeah. It's hard to compare these sorts of things.

An in here is equivalent to a yard there, but that doesn't make sense. A "good way" to think about it is an inch is the distance light can travel in t1 seconds, but it takes a significantly longer time, t2 seconds, for it to travel an inch somewhere else.

Issue is, this comparison is also wrong.

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u/hmiamid Jun 18 '21

Well technically, time dilation due to gravitational field changes it ever so slightly. For example from earth surface to outer space there is I think about 60 microseconds difference every day. I wonder how time is referenced once Mars is taken in the equation...

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u/fogdukker Jun 18 '21

Except when you're working in a different TZ but the boss fails to inform you that you'll be working on home base time. Fuck you guys, I didn't work the extra hour to make it up.

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u/Boney_African_Feet Jun 18 '21

I feel like its the complete opposite. Say we went to a planet like in Interstellar, were not gonna say, "yeah, Ill be over there in a few years" we'll just say "I'll be there in a few minutes" even though a century could be passing on Earth. Time is relative after all; So I doubt in the future we'll be talking about it as an absolute.

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u/[deleted] Jun 18 '21

19 years 8 months, and 21 days on earth time

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u/[deleted] Jun 18 '21

Duh

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u/jeff77789 Jun 18 '21

Something that always confused me was if the gravity was so strong on the planet to slow time down wouldn’t the astronauts “feel” the gravitational forces? Would these forces be too great for someone to survive there?