ELIF: how is time relative?

Question

ELIF: how is time relative?

In: Physics

Answer 1

Many explanations here, but I am going to shoot for one that helped me understand, from the very famous ancient redditor u/robotrollcall.

Light is a confusing metaphor here. as it it doesnt really explain “time” just observation.

So in a very simplified explanation, here is how I understood it. Everything in the universe is in constant motion, at *exactly* the same speed. the speed we experience this travel, when we standing still, is called time* (see reply to this comment for more explanation), this universal speed is also the same speed as light.

And if you do start to move, or run, etc, you begin to slow your movement through time.

For example, imagine that time were a direction or axis (4th dimension,* see reply to my comment for explanation) – lets say “up”, and universal speed were 100MPH, that means, if you did nothing, you would travel 100miles vertically every hour. However, if you moved forward, you are still going 100 miles per hour, but some portion of that 100 miles you travelled would be in the forward direction, and some portion in the upward direction (time). this means, if you moved forward at the speed of 50MPH, then you also traveled upwards “only 50mph” still a total of 100miles(sort of), and so you moved through “time” at half speed.

Now imagine you were so fast, that you moved “AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT” Foward, well, then, you wouldnt be moving at all in the “up” direction, so you did not “move in the direction of time.” (which explains why light is the same speed as the universal speed limit)

So in short, if you can understand time as a dimension “exactly” like x,y,z, and that there is a constant movement through universe at the same exact speed, and you can only “bend” that constant by moving in a different direction, and every time you move in any direction, you are going to be arriving in the “time” direction slightly slower. And the faster you go, the slower you get there, and why it is “relative” because it just matters how fast you individually move in the universe.