On Aug 19, 2005, at 1:53 PM, Kevin Street wrote:
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.
I'm still confused by this. Are you talking about Minkowski Diagrams?
Ref: <http://www.brown.edu/Students/OHJC/ma8/papers/minkowsk.htm>
In essence, yes. I'm talking about the way Minkowski's diagrams apply
in the "real" world.
As I
understand it, time is just something we define as a way to separate
different events.
No; that's akin to saying space is something we define as a way to
separate different objects. Just as there is space, a dimension, for
objects to move through, time possesses its own dimension or depth.
As Alberto said, the speed of time is one second per
second for every observer, because that's the definition. How can one
move
through time at a different velocity than that?
What you've defined isn't the speed of time; it's time's apparent
passage for an observer (more accurately, the "mileposts" an observer
sees as the moves through time). Time has no speed. What varies is the
means we use to scale our passage through it. That is, we measure in
seconds, minutes, months, etc. But because velocity though space
affects velocity through time, as you accelerate along one axis you
decelerate along the other.
Brian Greene used an interesting visualization for this. Suppose you've
got a car that can travel 100 MPH, and you drive east 100 miles in it,
then north 100 miles, both at maximum velocity. To someone watching the
car traveling east, pacing it perhaps in a vehicle, the car appears to
be moving at 100 mph.
Now suppose you drive the car *diagonally*, northeast, at 100 mph, but
that your eastbound observer remains on the main road and doesn't
follow the car diagonally. Pacing the vehicle, your observer will see
your car *appearing to be traveling slower than 100 mph* because rather
than having all its velocity being dumped into the eastward journey,
half its velocity will be northward. That is, while your car is still
going northeast at 100 mph, it is traveling along a "straight" eastward
axis at half that speed, and along a straight northward axis at, again,
half that speed.
The same sort of thing happens as we move through spacetime. The faster
we move through space, the slower we move through time; we have one
maximum speed (actually one speed, period), which means that
acceleration in one direction translates into deceleration in another.
Finally, time is not separate from space. It's intertwined. That's why
all this weird crap happens in the first place.
--
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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