That's an interesting point, David. Time is certainly not as linear as we do tend to perceive it as. Certainly, time - for you or me is moving at a greater pace than it was when either one of us was 10 years old - yet clocks are still ticking at the same rate. In terms of mass over time - little I've seen says anything about how gravity affects time, but it would seem pedantic to not consider it. Think of this: you get in a spaceship that takes off on a course to the Andromeda galaxy - it accelerates at a whopping 32ft/second per second (1G) for, let's say 10 years. Due to the effects of relativity, after 10 years - although your engines are still putting out that same acceleration - that is, to you and to the ship itself - it will not still be accelerating at that same rate. Actually it has not - since day 0 of your trip, but time has been ticking along slower and slower although you cannot and could not tell the difference. I do not have the math skills needed to put together the integral equation that would yield the 'actual percentage of the speed of light' which you'd achieve after accelerating for 10 years at "apparent 1G" but for simplicity, let's say it's half the speed of light. (Way overestimated, I'm sure). Did I mention your twin brother? Ok so you were separated at birth and never knew him - but while you're on your trip, he's aged 10 years. According to your ship-board chronometer though, you've only been gone 7 years... By the time you've "seemed" to accelerate 10 years - you've probably been gone for 15 or 20 years. (for the sake of 'presentation' I know these numbers are probably far from what they would actually work out to be) but to present this idea based on the theory of relativity - I'm just tossing these numbers out as example on scale which I cannot determine. Ok, here's the crux of my big theory. Is there any difference between acceleration and gravity? I say there isn't. 1G is 1G whether sitting in a chair on earth, sitting in a 1G centrifuge traveling around the earth in orbit or sitting in a spaceship traveling to the Andromeda galaxy. How would this affect us? Perhaps after sitting in an environment for X-billion years at 1G, it would appear that the universe around us is much much older than it actually is. (Or is time actually even relevant?) And if you looked up with very powerful telescopes wouldn't distant objects have a far red shift? Would it not appear that the universe is moving away from us? Would it not appear that the very farthest visible or observable object were moving away from us at close to the speed of light? They apparently are. But maybe they are actually not, because our point of view is distorted by "accelerating" within a gravitational "well" for billions of years....
That's MY take on it. -Don C On Jan 24, 2008 2:03 PM, David Locklear <[email protected]> wrote: > In less than 2 weeks, a new movie will be out > called "10,000 B.C." > > http://www.10000bcmovie.com/ >
