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Time and speed and how speed impacts time


Estranged

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1 minute ago, dimreepr said:

I expected more... 

 

Could you please elaborate?

1 minute ago, Mordred said:

There is always time processes but not an absolute rate of time.

OK, so if there's not an absolute rate of time then there are different rates of time, yes?

33 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

Time ages everything...

But time isn't constant, as explained, so things age in different times I guess, or by different ages. 

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Yes this is defined mathematically using reference frames. Processes within the same reference frame has the same rate of time. It is when you compare reference frames that the different rates becomes apparent. Those reference frames can vary in volume however. (higher level topic Einstein locality)

Edited by Mordred
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17 minutes ago, Estranged said:

Man my head hurts. And Happy New Year to all! My New Year resolution is that I aim to go mad until I understand this stuff.

The clock is a mechanical device developed by biological humans who invented the units that the clock measures. So that's how clocks are different from an aging body. A clock can't make things age and it might not be perfect at measuring age either. An aging body ages whether there's a clock or not. Changes in a clock's rate do not mean there's changes in other things that are effected by time.

I get that clocks are supposed to measure time, and they do, but couldn't clocks be potentially bad at measuring time under certain conditions? Like when they go really fast? Maybe, while the clock changes under those conditions, other measures of time, like aging, do not. Aging and clocks are different kinds of time measures, right? This seems not only logically plausible to me, but likely. 

I hope I'm making some kind of sense. I really appreciate everyone trying to answer me. 

Think of the time span as shrinking.

See the same thing with distance. The faster you move towards somewhere the shorter the distance you end up crossing.

 

A hurting head is a good sign here. Lot to take in.

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1 minute ago, Mordred said:

Yes there is even different rates of time between your head and your feet. Its simply too small to be detectable 

OK, given that, could there not be a difference when it comes to clock rate vs aging? 

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2 minutes ago, Estranged said:

 

OK, given that, could there not be a difference when it comes to clock rate vs aging? 

If you were to have an atomic clock sitting next to you the clock and you are still in different reference frames

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6 minutes ago, Mordred said:

Yes there is even different rates of time between your head and your feet. Its simply too small to be detectable 

I'm sorry I didn't see your response before. So you agree that age and clock rates can have time differences. That means that it's possible that if a person travels at a very high speed away from Earth and comes back a very high speed, then their age could be just the same as someone who stayed on Earth the whole time.

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3 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

Explain the difference...

First, saying "explain the difference" is much like saying "explain the sameness." Anyhow, we all seem to agree that time is relative, right? There's also been assertions that age is a measure of time and that clock rate measures time. Correct? Now, considering the relativity of time, I think it not all so absurd that age measures time differently than clock rate. 

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I see nothing to incorrect in the last its accurate as far as the last post goes. However different parts of your body will age at different rates lol. Its simply too insignificant to worry about 

Edited by Mordred
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3 minutes ago, Mordred said:

I see nothing to incorrect in the last its accurate as far as the last post goes. However different parts of your body will age at different rates lol

Thank you. That means a lot to me actually that I'm not completely crazy!

But I guess physics is kinda wrong when they try and describe time in regards to age. 

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Ever try to explain all the complexities to the public ? It is a very complex topic. At some point physicists must describe these complexities in terms people can relate to.

A good example is the rubber sheet analogy of spacetime curvature. Its simply used to convey the basic concepts

Edited by Mordred
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The most public explaining I've tried to do is right here.

This stuff has really been bothering me to the extent it interferes with my life. And it seems like no one can really answer me. I just googled "science forums" and I got here. 

I don't know what else to do.

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2 hours ago, Estranged said:

When the biological body made the mechanical body, it seems implausible that the two could be impacted by the same processes.

There is nothing special about biological systems. They brave the way they do because of complex sequences of chemical reactions. Those reaction take place at a rate determined by fundamental processes. We have observed this same processes being affected by time dilation. So there is no reason why biological system would not behave the same as any other clock.

2 hours ago, Estranged said:

Obviously. But you knew that was an "egging on" question, right? Time is personal, not mechanical. Agreed. The mechanism of time is an invention, not a given part of the universe. Time was never given to us, we created it.

The universe was evolving for billions of years before humans developed ways to measure time. So it is pretty clear that time is not a human invention. Our descriptions of what time "is" (philosophy) and ways of measuring it (science) are human inventions though.

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58 minutes ago, Estranged said:

I'm sorry I didn't see your response before. So you agree that age and clock rates can have time differences. That means that it's possible that if a person travels at a very high speed away from Earth and comes back a very high speed, then their age could be just the same as someone who stayed on Earth the whole time.

You are taking the wrong idea away from his statement.  While there are different time rates for your head and feet (due to gravitational time dilation), both the biological processes we associate with "aging" and chronological time are effected equally.   A clock by your head runs just a tad faster than one at your feet and the cells of your head age and metabolize just a bit faster than those in your feet. 

But in Earth's gravity field and at the height of Humans,  this is a really, really small difference.  So small a difference that just the random variations between individual cell metabolisms completely swamps it out.

There can also be differences in the biological aging rate between individual people.  Some people age biologically faster and some slower.  But this not mean that biological aging is not equally effected by time dilation.     Biological aging is just a product of complex bio-chemistry, which is, in turn, a product of physical processes.  And these physical processes are just as subject to Relativistic effects as those that a clock operates by.

One reason the most famous of the thought experiments in Relativity uses a set of twins is to eliminate the difference in biological aging between the individuals.   The point being that if these two twins lived side-by-side, at the end of any given period they would aged the same chronologically, mentally, and biologically.   However, if one of them were to be put in a spaceship, sent 17.32 light yrs away and back at 0.866c,  When he returns he will have aged 20 yrs, while his twin that did not take the trip would have aged 40 years.  This doesn't matter how you measure time: chronologically, biologically or mentally.

In this experiment, we assume that the both twins lived out their time in the same types of environments. (breathed the same kind of air, ate the same types of food, got the same exercise, etc)

The only way you could have our traveling twin return and be biologically the same age as his stay at home brother would be to introduce some change to the environment that one or the other lives in that either artificially slows the aging of the stay at home twin or accelerates the aging of the traveling twin.  (If our traveling twin drank, smoked, ate all the wrong foods, and didn't get any exercise while his brother lived a healthy lifestyle, you might be able to have them having aged biologically the same upon their reunion. However,there's a limit to how much this can effect the outcome.  If we increased the traveling twins speed of 0.99c,  you would need to have their aging rates differ by a factor of 7. This would be a bit difficult to pull off with just a change of diet and exercise)

The upshot is that time dilation effects operate equally on clocks and the rate at which people age.

 

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