I vaguely understand that, according to the theory of relativity, because the speed of light is constant, it stays the same regardless of how bent the space is, so time has to pass slower when there is a bend in space – but I cannot apply that understanding to time actually slowing down. All the examples on youtube seem to be understanding something I’m not. I cannot wrap my head around time dilation.
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I do really well with real world examples/visualisations.
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So Einstein’s explanation in his book ‘Relativity: a Simple Explanation that Anyone can Understand’ was that we only measure time or distance using objects, and if you use objects with relative velocities approaching the speed of light to measure time then they will report time and distance as doing weird things.
This is because the speed of light is determined by the relative electric permittivity and magnetic permeability of a vacuum, which are *laws of physics*, and the special postulate of relativity says that you don’t observe things as obeying different laws of physics just because their velocity is large relative to yours – so they *must* be measuring the velocity of a photon moving away from them as the same as you’d measure it even though this makes them look to you as if time is slowed down for them.
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