Time
This podcast will be discussing the nature of time and will talk a bit about time travel. The Creationist claim for the week is in regards to the Law of Biogenesis. I also make mention of a mistake I made in the previous podcast.
Time
Time
posted by Lucretius at 4:50 PM
2 Comments:
It’s really interesting how the Multiple Worlds Hypothesis is used in this context of space travel. I myself have only heard of it (or similar ideas as this) in a religious context such as in Mormonism where they also seem to believe in multiple dimensions in planetary habitation.
Peter,
Sorry for taking so long to get to your questions:
The accelerated expansion of the universe does seem to imply that space and time undergo some sort of change. With space we know that the universe is growing larger at an ever-increasing rate. So what, you ask, happens to time?
Well, according to relativity, time simply appears to pass slower for 1) objects travelling at high, constant velocities and 2) for objects within a gravitational field. It doesn't seem as if either of these are changed by the accelerated expansion, and so it seems as if nothing is really happening to our perception of time.
One could possibly argue that since the gravitational exertion of other bodies on one another is getting weaker as time progresses, a weaker gravitational pull corresponding with a faster expanding universe — yet no one would really notice this effect. Local gravitational forces are what really matters in terms of time dilation. So, to sum it up, nothing really happens to time.
The expansion of the universe is detectable using stellar objects known as standard candles, like the Type 1A Supernova. With these objects, we can compare their known brightness to the measured brightness, and calculate the rate they're moving away. I don't think you're statement is quite as accurate as you think though — we can observe the universe's expansion because we see further objects away from us moving away at a faster rate, and those closer moving away at a slower rate. Galaxies are like raisins in an expanding loaf of bread which is the universe. The universe is expanding and we are hanging along with the ride, essentially travelling with space. However, if you meant people expanding as well — well, we couldn't even say the universe was expanding: everything would be staying the same size, because our tools of measurement would also increase in size, along with us, thus leaving everything the same size in the end. I'll tackle your other questions later.
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