ELIF: how is time relative?
In: Physics
Time is simply a mental construct we project onto motion. It’s an intellectual convenience we use to make sense of reality. Without motion, time would not exist. And without matter, motion cannot exist.
So, for example, historically, people marked the passage of time by the movement of planets. People today use clocks, which are just objects which feature regularly occurring intervals, reliable and consistent enough for us to use to provide context to our lives. But we could just as easily use tides, the motion of the planets, phases of the moon. a heartbeat, weather patterns, etc. Any sort of regularly recurring event – again, time is simply our way of making sense of *motion*.
People have gotten used to accepting time as a physical, independent entity, that has its own substance, only because this has been so useful to us. But time is relative: the closer one gets to the speed of light, the more time slows down. If were you to travel at light-speed for one year, you would age one year, but centuries would have passed for everyone else no traveling at that speed.
Time is simply motion.
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