RE: Questions about Time, Distance, and Relativity
November 11, 2014 at 9:33 pm
(This post was last modified: November 11, 2014 at 9:34 pm by Heywood.)
(November 6, 2014 at 4:24 pm)Pickup_shonuff Wrote: Yeah, it's quite confusing... Greene writes, "Einstein proclaimed that all objects in the universe are always traveling through spacetime at one fixed speed--that of light... If an object does move through space, however, this means that some of the previous motion through time must be diverted... We now see that time slows down when an object moves relative to us because this diverts some its motion through time into motion through space. The speed of an object through space is thus merely a reflection of how much its motion through time is diverted... the maximum speed through space occurs if all of an object's motion through time is diverted to motion through space. This occurs when all of its previous light-speed motion through time is diverted to light-speed motion through space."
Can you elucidate that?
Imagine that you are traveling in a car at exactly 60 mph. You are headed due north. In one hour you will be 60 miles further north then you were an hour ago.
Suppose the road veers to the northwest. Even though you continue at 60 mph for the next hour, you won't be 60 miles further north then you were an hour ago. Why? because when your changed direction from north...to northwest the rate at which you were heading north slowed and the rate at which you were moving west increased(from 0 to say 30 mph). Some of your northward movement was diverted to westward movement.
Brian Green explains it well in the Fabric of the Cosmos...illusion of time. This video from 13:40 mark on esplans it.
