Is “Now”, for me, mathematically the same as “Now” for people on the other side of the world?

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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

25 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Time is an artificial construct we imposed on the observable universe. Technically, everything you sense is in the past because it takes time for light to reach your eyes, then for the sight/sound/touch type signal to be translated into electrical signals, then more time for it to travel to your brain, and for the brain to interpret those signals. I want to say our sight “delay” is 80 milliseconds if I remember correctly. Something like that.

Having said all that, the concept of “now” becomes hard to determine. Let alone compare two events to see if they happened at the same time

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