How does speed affect the way you experience time?

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The theory is if you go near the speed of light then the time will move much slower than someone that is stationary but it is also stated that speed is relative, which seems to contradict this theory. To the person moving near speed of light in space will see the stationary person moving near the speed of light and vice versa, so how does time change happen between them?

In: Physics

4 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Time is relative too! If you’ve seen the movie “Interstellar”, you might remember a scene where the astronauts spend a few hours on a planet, but when they return to their ship, the crew mate they left behind has aged over a decade. This is an exaggerated example, but that’s the concept.

So different objects (people) can literally move through time at different speeds.

The reason *why* this happens is very complicated, but at a fundamental level, it turns out “space” (the thing we move through when we talk about the speed of light) and “time” (the thing we *usually* move through at a roughly constant rate when we talk about getting older) are *the same thing*: spacetime. So when you change the way (i.e., the speed) you’re moving through space, you’re really changing the way you’re moving through *spacetime*. Make a big enough change, like moving close to the cosmic speed limit (speed of light), and you’ll start to notice changes in the way you move through time.

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