Time. Throwing Up Theory. Oooof!
So, it has so been assigned that I somewhat loosely expound on Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity and how it relates to time. Trying to boil this material down to a simplified essence a five year old would be able to understand proved to be most difficult. For one, my knowledge of the subject, even after rereading various entries (and other simplified abstracts deemed more “accessible”) is still shaky, but that which i can glean form the text is utterly fascinating.
The generic definition and entry for general relativity includes this statement in some manifestation: the observed gravitational attraction between masses results from the warping of space and time by those masses.
Basically, matter causes space and time to curve and that a uniform gravity feels much the same as a uniform acceleration. For the sake of this class, Time, let’s focus on the time aspect of general relativity called gravitational time dilation.
Gravitational time dilation is a product of this curvature of space and time and, in essence, appears to slow down or “dilate” it. In the presence of massive gravity associated with a massive object, like a black hole, time dilation becomes more apparent than with traditional bodies experienced throughout the universe. I found a decent hypothetical example of this in action, though, I am not sure how anyone would ever be able to observe such a thing beyond computer generation: an observer far from a black hole would observe time passing extremely slowly for an astronaut falling through the hole’s boundary and would actually never quite see the astronaut fall in. As far as what the astronaut would be feeling, well, I guess we can’t ask him now can we.
But actually, the astronaut would probably think that time was passing normally. But to him, if he could see his observer, it might seem as if he/she were moving pretty darn fast or time was passing much more quickly.
However, within each persons frame of reference, they are in perfect agreement with the clock. If thirty minutes has passed on the clock, each person has aged thirty minutes.
The difference is exposed when the clocks are compared by separate observers. And that is THE FINAL WORD on general relativity and time.
