When Einstein explained the the theory of relativity and special relativity. He explained time is an illusion and are by perception of the observer. So how does one percieve time? Is it by light? or just.. any event. If its by light. would it explain that the farther im away from something, any change that would take place by that something would by delayed slightly to me because of my distanc, or motion?. and what is spacetime?
In: Physics
Time is not an illusion any more than shape or size is an illusion. It depends upon speed and location, but is still verifiable, and with but a little math we can all come to an agreement on time at any point.
Time is a relationship between changing things. For instance, how long it takes gravity to pull something down versus an area with less gravity.
For instance, as we currently define it, time is a comparison of how many times a cesium atom can emit an electromagnetic wave during whatever event we are measuring.
So time for you is the interaction of all the molecules, electrons, and light in and around your body.
Space actually also distorts. The two exist together and distort in related ways – their shared existence is spacetime.
I can try to answer the perception bit. We perceive a series of events in relation to each other. For example, I know I put my phone on my desk before I went to the bathroom. I know one had to occur before the other, so that way I’ve got a sequence controlled by my memory, which I can use to create references. If my phone had no notifications when I put it down, but did after I came back from the bathroom, then I can reason that the notification must have been sent between these events. Now the sequence is longer. (Each event itself is a set of sequences: I open my drawer with my right hand, I grab my phone from my bag, I put it face down in my drawer, and so on).
We’ve also got the sun, which dictated the evolution of circadian clocks. Our biological processes can be based around oscillatory activity (back and forth reactions) in some of our cells. This can give a sense of time the way a pendulum in a pendulum clock does. There’s theories that suggest the brain has pulses with constant intervals which can be used as a basis to perceive time. Much of this is set around our lovely 24 hour cycle.
As for your light question, I believe the way that affects us is by modifying our perception. To record these events in our brains, we must first create an image through our stimuli. If the light from an object takes longer to get to our eyes, then our perception will be skewed and thus we would perceive things happening as later than they actually did (This happens with everything due to delays in brain/body). But the intervals between events wouldn’t be affected as long as the light is coming at the same location with the same speed.
Spacetime is different from time. Time is just what we calling the passing of events, the way we perceive it. Space is the 3 dimensions we can observe. Spacetime is those 3 dimensions combined with the 4th dimension we call time. So spacetime is sort of a union of all these ideas we’ve got from things we can observe. It’s from studying spacetime that we’ve understood how time and gravity are affected by mass. I don’t know physics as much as biology, so that’s where my understanding of this ends. I hope I cleared up some confusion.
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