Are Space And Time One Continuum?

The comments on this video thread are actually pretty fascinating and add a lot of spirited discussion.

One of the commenters Khaz had this to say:

My problem with grasping this is that these people say movement affects time, how do they know that? All they do is show a photon clock which is basically just a representation of time. An object moving but is not in fact TIME itself. Just because a representation of time slows down it doesnt mean time slows down. A second is always a second no matter where you are how fast you are going… what my brain. I’ve watched endless explanations but still dont get it. Doomed being stupid forever? Is there an explanation for why time is diluted by movement?

Commenter V Kiosk has a fascinating reply:

time dilation is proven because if we assume that the speed of light is constant, time dilation would be necessary to avoid contradictions. If you were on a theoretical spaceship travelling at 99 percent the speed of light, which is impossible but lets just theorise, and fired light in the direction we were moving, from someone watching the ship, the light would appear to move at the speed of light relative to them. But to the people on the ship it would only look like the light is moving very slowly. This is similar to if you threw a ball while driving, to a person looking at you from outside, the ball would look faster than what you perceive. This shouldnt be allowed because the speed of light relative to non accelerating objects is constant. To solve this time dilation comes into play. This paradox would be solved if we assumed that time for objects moving was slower, so seemingly slow motion would actually be extremely fast. Its like looking at a sports car in slo mo. it looks slow, but the time is also slow so in reality it is moving very fast. Time dilation is a product of a paradox which can only be solved if time dilation existed. Hope you understood.

That is quite an earful but interesting none the less.

We hope you enjoy the video and feel free to comment with your ideas!

thanks to pbs.org for the great info



78 Comments

  1. James Burns said:

    Gravity, in the case of celestial objects. A prism in others. As a wave of light approaches an object of sufficient density, it is pulled toward said object, altering its original course. This is why you can observe starlight from stars on the other side of our sun, as in the aforementioned experiment.

  2. Jason Good said:

    Gravity does not affect light. Photons are massless. If they werent than the light coming from our star would be slowed and wouldnt travel at the speed of light

  3. Jason Good said:

    Your missing the point that gravity is caused by the bending of space. The more the space bend due to the mass object, the more gravity it has

  4. James Burns said:

    The speed of light is not constant, and has been proven. It takes a very long time for photons to actually escape the interior of he sun. Also, a photon seems to “want” to naturally travel at high velocity, returning to its original speed even after being artificially stopped. Gravity is not a product of “bending” space, rather that of density. The more dense an object, the more “pull” it applies to the surrounding universe.

  5. Jason Good said:

    A dense object alone doesnt explain why gravity works. Just cuz something is dense doesnt mean it pulls you. Spacecraft being bent. Take for example a bed sheets. Put a bowling ball in the middle, the sheet sinks, the more massive an object the more it sinks. That sinking is causing gravity..watch that video

  6. James Burns said:

    That is a false model. Tie a string to a rock and twirl it in an arc. Not quite accurate, but a better model of what is actually happening.

  7. James Burns said:

    Of course it’s caused by gravity! The earth is trying to pull the object toward its center. But what that model fails to identify is that the same force is present on every possible line one may draw thru the Earth.

  8. Jason Good said:

    Saying something is big therfore pulls you is very incomplete. Why doesn’t a massive object pull you. Something obviously causes gravity. Your missing it. Curvature of space explains what causes gravity and why light bends around an object. Obviously einstein knew this and before the experiment took place he calculated 6 decimal points to where the light would shift. That’s as accurate as it gets. He obviously knew what he was doing and had the math to back him up

  9. James Burns said:

    Smh. Science is the search for truth. That is all I am doing. Science at one time knew for a fact that the earth was flat and that the heavens revolved around it. I claim to be no “smarter” than anyone, I just have different ideas and hypothesis. That’s what science is all about.

  10. James Burns said:

    A massive object does pull me! It keeps me from flying off into space. Look, if you were to drop a marble off of a very tall building, it would contact the wall on its way down due to the pull of gravity from the massive building.

  11. Jason Good said:

    Again you are failing to explain what causes gravity. What is gravity? You can’t say gravity pulls you and that’s it.

  12. Jason Good said:

    If u haf a huge sheet and put a massive ball in the minutes and it sunk. Everything leave massive will roll towards it. Thus you get gravity. The sheet is 2d. Its really happen in 3d

  13. Jason Good said:

    General theory of relativity has never been disproven and has been proved hundreds of times so unless you can disprove it, its correct

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