If I understand it correctly, we measure time by how fast light passes, or something similar to that. Now if the universe expands faster than the speed of light, would that mean that the universe ages faster than earth, or maybe slower than earth? Maybe this doesn’t make sense but I have a gut feeling that there’s something to it…
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As far as my limited understanding goes, there are two naturally occurring factors that can affect the speed of time.
1) The speed of movement of an object through space (and not the movement of space itself). Space expanding does not affect the flow of time by itself. You need to be moving THROUGH tha space itself, and relative to the region of space you’re occupying (not relative to a distant point in space that’s expanding at a different rate or direction
2) The distortion of space-time where the object is located. This occurs naturally due to gravity in case of large or celestial objects. Eg., the international space station needs to periodically adjust their clocks because they move at a very slightly different rate through time than we do on Earth (time moved a tiny bit faster for them than it does for us, but to a degree that can only be observed via an atomic clock over a period of time). Since the expansion of space itself doesn’t distort space-time in the same way gravity does (i.e., troughs due to large masses), the expansion has no affect on the passage of time.
Yes, time moves differently in parts of the Universe, but not because of expansion. If you orbit Jupiter, time will slow down compared to Earth. If you orbit Mars, it’ll speed up compared to Earth. If you travel to a distant point between Earth and Mars, it’ll be faster. And beyond Pluto but before the Oort cloud, it’s faster still.
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