I have only a very vague awareness of the idea of relativity but I’m aware that there’s a concept that people in orbit experience less time than those on the planet due to gravity, in some way.
Does this mean that the idea of “now”, as in a moment that is right now, is marginally different for people in other places? Are they experiencing a moment that is in my objective future/past, in a mathematical sense?
In: Physics
The idea of “now” for you, ‘mathematically’ (logically) is different from the idea of “now” for someone on the other side of the room. It isn’t much more noticeable for someone on the other side of the world than that. It depends more on *how fast they/you are moving* than your relative physical position, but it is *still* negligible until your/their relative velocity increases to a substantial fraction of the speed of light. And anyone circling around the center of the Earth farther away is necessarily traveling faster than someone who is doing so closer to that center point. This is why people reference astronauts, although the actual difference is mere seconds accumulated over days, weeks, and months. Since they travel through space faster than you do, they travel slower through time, so technically they are in your past (what would be your past if you were in their present/presence) and you are in their future (likewise), but are also experiencing the same present we do (just from a different perspective), so those terms aren’t a good way to think about it.
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