• Question: Is the speeding up or slowing down of time possible?

    Asked by 282susb46 to Samuel, Richard, Nikolai, Nicki, Cristiane on 12 Mar 2015. This question was also asked by Niall burs.
    • Photo: Nikolai Adamski

      Nikolai Adamski answered on 12 Mar 2015:

      I’m no physicist, but one of the key principles from Einstein’s theories is the relativity of things.
      As far as I understand it, if you would travel with (nearly) the speed of light relative to an observer that stands still, no time would seem to pass for you, whereas time would pass normally for the observer.
      Here is a link which seems to explain it quite well.
      http://www.askamathematician.com/2010/02/q-why-does-going-fast-or-being-lower-make-time-slow-down/
      hope that helps

    • Photo: Samuel Ellis

      Samuel Ellis answered on 12 Mar 2015:

      I won’t pretend to be any sort of expert on physics, but the relativity of time is very interesting. While changing the speed of time by itself seems to be impossible, time does pass at different rates depending on your relative speed.

      In the real world this actually does affect things. For example, GPS satellites have to constantly adjust their time compared to us on the ground because they move so fast orbiting the Earth that time passes a little slower for them. In the same way, astronauts who have spent a while on the International Space Station technically have aged a tiny bit slower while they were up there, because it moves so fast that time was slower. Very weird!

    • Photo: Richard Simons

      Richard Simons answered on 13 Mar 2015:

      Definitely. I’d follow the links posted by Nikolai for more information, but as a brief overview it’s all about perspective (unfortunately, yours is the only time that you can’t speed up or slow down).

      When you start moving REALLY quickly the space and time around you starts to warp, it an effect of the universe trying to maintain the universal speed limit (speed of light in vacuum: c~300 000 000 m/s). What this means is that you will see others around you (who aren’t travelling quickly) apparently experiencing faster time, but your own actions (and chemistry, and laws of physics) will feel completely normal to you. The other way around if you observe someone moving very quickly, their time will appear to be slowed down, if they drop a ball it will take a long time (from your perpsective) to hit the ground.

      Relativity is a weird one to get your head around

Comments