Time and the twin paradox by Alan McDougall
Nothing is really as it seems to us and all things are subjective to the observer. Everything is relative to each person from the viewpoint.
Comparative readings, of two almost unimaginably accurate precision atomic clocks located on fast moving spacecraft and airplanes and on earth, have detected this strange skewing of time and proved Einstein’s theory of relativity to be fact.
Stop all the clocks in the universe and movement will continue unaffected.
Stop all movement and the illusion we call time will stop and nothing ever happen again.
As an object approached the speed of light it becomes more and compressed (It occupies less and less space), distorts the fabric of space time and time slows on the speeding object when compared to an object stationary state, it left at its source.
Let the Object equate to a spaceship if you like.
Time is much like an elastic string which can only be stretched in one direction namely; into the future.
The twin paradox describes what happens. Twins; One boards a spacecraft that accelerates to near light speed, on say a voyage to Alpha Centauri, some four light years from earth.
The other twin remains on the home planet. Ten years later the bother who went to Alpha Centauri returns having aged only "one subjective year" because time has moved slower for him, “relative” to his brother who remained on the home planet, where time moved at the "normal rate"
Why and how did this ageing difference happen?, why has the spaceman one brother become twenty years younger than his brother who remained at home? or the reverse if you like!
There is no absolute time, time moves differently from one object to the next and in one location to the next according to its "gravity mass and density" Condense the matter on a object, into smaller and "smaller volume" and you alter gravity and the flow of time on its surface. This is the reason that time stops in a black hole of infinite density
Note; this will really happen if we develop near light speed space vehicles
A year of subjective time has passed for the twin on the spaceship, when compared to twenty year older brother who has somehow aged at a 1/20 ratio. The brother who remained at home is a grey haired old man of say 65 and his returning brother just one year older at 26 years of age
An enigmatic paradox but absolutely true and real. One exciting, but far distant use of this effect is the real possibility of reaching nearly any moment in the future.
Given enough speed and enormous energy, one could reach the Olympic Games of the year C.E. 3108, in a matter of a few subjective days or even return a million years later only older be maybe a decade or so older.
Backward times travel to the past, is a fantasy and if this were possible, a person could do the impossible and go back and murder their younger self.
There is no universal now! Events are simply there, hanging in space-time Time cannot exist without space and space cannot exist without time.
We only conceive of time by the movement of an object through space, so space and time are different realities of the same thing and can only exist where movement is allowed. For example, stop all movement in the universe and you have stopped time, have you not? Therefore, there is really only one reality all bond up into and combined into what I call "spacetimemovement."
There is simply no universal now and each moment is unique to the observer
By Alan McDougall 29/8/2007