A Question About Time

Science has already proven that time slows down for astronauts. For instance, if you were to travel at the speed of light out in space for 10 years then return to Earth, something like 300 years will have gone by here.

Now what if I there really was a machine that could adjust my size. Let's say I hop in this machine and my buddy shrinks me all the way down to the atomic level, then back to normal a second later. Do you think I would return a few hundred years older?

How did you get from time dilation due to traveling at the speed of light to time dilation from changing your physical size?

Originally posted by Pistoche
How did you get from time dilation due to traveling at the speed of light to time dilation from changing your physical size?

Because maybe the speed has less to do with time dilation than the frame of reference of the observer.
Seriously, if I were to shrink all the way down to where an electron becomes my sun, don't you think time would pass by faster for me?

Originally posted by Bone75
if I were to shrink all the way down to where an electron becomes my sun, don't you think time would pass by faster for me?

No.

Originally posted by swanne

Originally posted by Bone75
if I were to shrink all the way down to where an electron becomes my sun, don't you think time would pass by faster for me?

No.

Wow what an insightful response. Thanks for the contribution.

Originally posted by Bone75
Science has already proven that time slows down for astronauts. For instance, if you were to travel at the speed of light out in space for 10 years then return to Earth, something like 300 years will have gone by here.

Now what if I there really was a machine that could adjust my size. Let's say I hop in this machine and my buddy shrinks me all the way down to the atomic level, then back to normal a second later. Do you think I would return a few hundred years older?

Do you think you would and if so why?

reply to post by Bone75


Just think about it. Do insects, which are smaller, live in the past or the future relative to you?

reply to post by Bone75


Time dilation is due to the frame of reference of the observer (just like what you stated). However that frame of reference is effected by either your relative velocity (travelling extremely fast ie the speed of light) or the gravity of the masses around you (you being near a black hole as opposed to someone on earth). Time dilation has nothing to do with your own personal mass.

reply to post by swanne


To be completely accurate, you would not being able to tell the frame of reference of the insect (since you are not the insect itself). You have a different frame of reference than the insect so you cannot tell if the insect is experiencing time differently than yourself since you are not the insect. For instance, if you were Person A positioned on earth and I am Person B travelling at the speed of light, for you it would appear that I am experiencing time the same as you, but for me time would be slower relative to you.

reply to post by swanne


Don't we all technically live in the past from each other?

I mean if we really think about it, our vision of something depends on the light that's reflected off of that certain object which must travel to our eyes to record it.

Just like the stars we see are not as they are "now", but as they were millions or billions of years ago, because their light is just getting to us "now".

We work on much shorter distances here, so everything seems to appear to happen instantaneously, but there's still a lag, however small it may be....

The true now must exist in our minds only, free from all sensory "noise". Because even as I touch or hear something it takes time for it to register in my mind. Even as I feel the touch of this keyboard it still took a nanosecond or whatever for my brain to process it. That didn't actually happen now.

What is the time duration of now?

I have read that a human's perception of time is regulated by the heartbeat. Small animals have faster heartbeats and they are physically much quicker than humans.

So I'm going to say with certainty that a housefly sees me in slow motion and A hummingbird sees me in slow motion. Perception of time would change when you are tiny but according to general relativity and the 2nd law of thermodynamics, nothing would change.

reply to post by InverseLookingGlass


Interesting way of looking at it.

Time is scalar- based on size and space

Universal time is much slower to us. The entirety of human existence is only a nanosecond on the universal time scale. A gnat experiences a lifetime in only a few days or weeks of our time.

So just as a galaxy would appear never to rotate in our view, perhaps a gnats view of a human is the same. In the "instant" of our time that it takes for us to swat that gnat out of existence, perhaps in its view it took "hours" for that to happen.

Originally posted by PhotonEffect
Just like the stars we see are not as they are "now", but as they were millions or billions of years ago, because their light is just getting to us "now".

What is the time duration of now?

How long is now and can there be two separate now's now?

Originally posted by Itisnowagain

Originally posted by PhotonEffect
Just like the stars we see are not as they are "now", but as they were millions or billions of years ago, because their light is just getting to us "now".

What is the time duration of now?

How long is now and can there be two separate now's now?

Not sure how long now is. All I know is now is where past and future meet. So how long is that instant?

It's a notion of quantum time, as I see it. Perhaps it's so small there may not be any such thing as the concept of now.

I think the concept of now is relative. So yes, there can be an infinite number of nows as I see it

Originally posted by PhotonEffect

Originally posted by Itisnowagain

Originally posted by PhotonEffect
Just like the stars we see are not as they are "now", but as they were millions or billions of years ago, because their light is just getting to us "now".

What is the time duration of now?

How long is now and can there be two separate now's now?

Not sure how long now is. All I know is now is where past and future meet. So how long is that instant?

It's a notion of quantum time, as I see it. Perhaps it's so small there may not be any such thing as the concept of now.

I think the concept of now is relative. So yes, there can be an infinite number of nows as I see it

It is never not now.

reply to post by Bone75


How long will it take for most people to realize that "time" is simply a concept which man uses to distinguish the periods between passing events.
Have you never noticed how "long" a day when not much is going on and you simply sit around and do nothing.
By the same token the day seems to fly by when you are busy or very entertained.
This is the brains preception of the passage of time.
If you travel at a high velocity for a long period, the preception of the passage of events will be different from those who are not traveling with you. It all has to do with the personal preception. Maybe others, who live in other worlds, count the passage of time in a totally different manner.
I don't know if animals have the same, or different frame of reference, in the this matter but I have observed that they don't seem to be as hung yup on it as man is.

Originally posted by PhotonEffect

Not sure how long now is. All I know is now is where past and future meet.

The past and the future and every other concept arise in the now.

So how long is that instant?

Timeless.

reply to post by Itisnowagain


I'm okay with that. We can give a loosely defined parameter of now, that we can all relate to.

Now can be a matter of a second, a day, a week, a year... but it is completely illusory because of how infinitely tiny the duration of now is.

Think about how long now actually lasts before it instantly becomes the past

Originally posted by PhotonEffect
reply to post by Itisnowagain

 

I'm okay with that. We can give a loosely defined parameter of now, that we can all relate to.

Now can be a matter of a second, a day, a week, a year... but it is completely illusory because of how infinitely tiny the duration of now is.

Think about how long now actually lasts before it instantly becomes the past

Have you noticed that it is never not now? Past is a idea arising now.
You are always now and everything you see or hear is now.
Past and future are just stories.

Originally posted by InhaleExhale

Originally posted by Bone75
Science has already proven that time slows down for astronauts. For instance, if you were to travel at the speed of light out in space for 10 years then return to Earth, something like 300 years will have gone by here.

Now what if I there really was a machine that could adjust my size. Let's say I hop in this machine and my buddy shrinks me all the way down to the atomic level, then back to normal a second later. Do you think I would return a few hundred years older?

Do you think you would and if so why?

Well yes I do, and here's why....
If instead of hopping in a space shuttle and travelling away from earth, what if I just started growing and growing until the earth becomes the size of a particle in an atom contained in my hand. From that perspective, in the amount of time it takes me to pick my nose, billions of years will pass by on earth.

Originally posted by PhotonEffect
Think about how long now actually lasts before it instantly becomes the past

This is where the illusion of time begins - thinking.
Thinking happens now but thinking thinks of other than what is. Thinking compares this with that. But is there a that? Or is there just this and this appears as thoughts speaking of other than this.
The speaking is this but the stories they speak can lead one to believe in all sorts of things that are not true.

Notice that you are always now seeing the present appearance constantly changing. Time is never actually experienced - only movement and change happens.