On Aug 19, 2005, at 8:29 AM, Julia Thompson wrote:
Are we going through spacetime at the speed of light, basically?
Yes -- the combined velocity along the space and time vectors is
lightspeed. (I don't recall when exactly this realization was made
clear to me, but when it did get clarified, it made it a lot easier to
understand why FTL travel isn't possible in this universe. It also kind
of freaked me out.)
Asking, though, what the speed of time is is a lot like (exactly like)
asking what the speed of space is. Time, being a dimension, doesn't
have a speed. It's only your motion through it that applies the measure
of speed.
When you're at rest, your motion in time is maximized to light's
velocity. When you move, some of the velocity on the time axis is
diverted to velocity in the spatial axes. That's why, if you're moving
at a significant velocity, you get the (relative) effects of time
slowdown, but of course only compared to the framework of others not
moving so quickly. As far as you're concerned, time is still moving at
the same rate.
On Aug 19, 2005, at 2:16 AM, Andrew Paul wrote:
Ah, now there is the rub.. See, when people fly away from earth say,
and
go fast, time slows down relative to us. And we are moving relative to
other places in the universe, so time is presumably going faster or
slower in said places.
If what you're thinking about here is cosmic expansion, it doesn't
apply. (Argh!) The universe itself -- its underlying structure -- is
expanding, which (argh! Ouch!) does not translate to velocity for the
things carried along in that expansion. So even if you pick a galaxy
that's on the "far side" of the universe from our own, one that's being
carried away from us at a maximum apparent velocity, you won't see time
dilation for its inhabitants relative to us or vice versa.
I was wondering if there are places where time is
going, relatively, slower than it is here, and this made me wonder, is
their like a maximum or minimum speed of time, and where would it
occur.
Absolutely. Gravity is effectively acceleration, which means that time
near strong gravitational sources is slowed. And of course Earth's
motion around the sun and our system's motion around the galactic core
will contribute, in their own ways, to slowing down in time, but TTBOMK
in order for these kinds of effects to be noticeable as more than a few
seconds' difference over, say, a month or a year, you've either got to
be very near an extremely dense object (picture the current
administration and multiply by at least a factor of ten), or on a very
fast-moving one. Much faster than you normally see in astronomical
objects.
--
Warren Ockrassa, Publisher/Editor, nightwares Books
http://books.nightwares.com/
Current work in progress "The Seven-Year Mirror"
http://www.nightwares.com/books/ockrassa/Flat_Out.pdf
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