Negative Time Dilation Eternal Photons and other speculation

a reply to: glend

I have to ask, what insight do you have on a photons perspective. So then if matter/mass was able to move at that velocity and most likely it would convert into a wave/energy from our frame of reference, that one could travel instantaneously from one point to another?

Is that what you are postulating?

Why bother with all this fuss about wormholes then.

I haven't looked it up yet but I'm about to, yet even now saying that a photons travels from point A to B instantaneously no matter the distance seems incorrect.

As one left our star now. It would pass us in 8 minutes(the visual data we observe). Are you mixing up a photon and a solid beam of light such as a laser? The concept is off, it seems. But as I said I haven't researched a "photons perspective" as yet.

I'll get back to you on this one.

a reply to: glend


After a quick search for "photons motion"

The electromagnetic wave travels at speed of light which is explained by Maxwell's equations. ... As the quanta of these waves, photons will also travel at light speed. In special relativity, the energy of a particle is related to its mass via E=γmc2. Photons are massless, but they have finite energy.

I think, if I were able to travel at C my local time would stop but everything else at a lower v would still be moving in time in terms of ageing for example. The problem would be viewing it at that speed. All one would see is light. One would consist of light and all would be one.

Imagine every photon that has ever existed. We see points of light from this reference. At that reference all there is, is light.

And if I left the sun now, at C it would take 8 minutes to get here. Simple

A photon is massless, has no electric charge, and is a stable particle. A photon has two possible polarization states. In the momentum representation of the photon, which is preferred in quantum field theory, a photon is described by its wave vector, which determines its wavelength λ and its direction of propagation.

And lastly

The photon – the quantum of light or other electromagnetic radiation – is normally considered to have zero mass. But some theories allow photons to have a small rest mass and one consequence of that would be that photons could then decay into lighter elementary particles. So if such a decay were possible, what are the limits on the lifetime of a photon? That is the question asked by a physicist in Germany, who has calculated the lower limit for the lifetime of the photon to be three years in the photon’s frame of reference. This translates to about one billion billion (1018) years in our frame of reference.

Article at physicsworld.com

If you are referring to length contraction. Can you explain why the is relativistic delay? For example it could take 20 minutes for a radio wave to be received that had been transmitted by a spacecraft. If it's instant for the wave, why do you observe and are bound by a 20 minute delay on detecting the data.

I'm leaning towards the theory that there is a yet undiscovered phenomenon occuring with the interaction of photons and space.

On a side note:

Dark matter could be explained as negative mass from our perspective. As opposed to mass or zero mass. Negative mass moving backwards in relative time and thus not classically observable. If that were true, this region of space could be inside a black hole. Considering the higher percentage of dark matter/energy theorised in the universe. Locally yes, we are feeling time move forward but may be moving back as things we observe outside move forward. Not even light escapes a black hole right? The outer of the black hole would be visible from inside as long as there was no distortion in the information.

a reply to: AnodeOrCathode

Your input feels like clickbait.. seriously haven't you got something educated and productive to add.

I know PC specs but as for console limitations, I'm unsure of what you mean.. if gaming was like Tron legacy, now that would be fun!

What word games?

a reply to: Havick007

Negative mass moving backwards in relative time and thus not classically observable.

I have come across this theory before, not quite sure what to make of it at this time. If there are alternate time lines going on it will help piece it together. Mass as we know it could be just one frequency in a whole spectrum of mass.

originally posted by: Havick007
Apologies to the community, my above reply was appalling in terms of grammar, writing and general English skills

I'm not a grammar nazi, so I was trying to make sense out of what you said aside from the grammar etc. There are things we can't measure very well, but if we can't measure them we can't claim to know very much about them, at least not in any scientific sense. So shunning measurement is in some sense shunning science, and exploring paths of things which can't be measured is going down a non-scientific road.

There's talk of things appearing different from different perspectives, but what you don't seem to realize is that all those perspectives are accounted for in the theory of relativity and it's only a matter of doing a Lorentz transformation to re-calculate exactly what things would look like from the perspective of any possible observer. When you do this, for any observer, light always travels at the speed of light, according to the theory.

originally posted by: glend
From a photon's perspective, its trajectory occurs instantaneously.

I even see some physicists saying this, but no doubt they are completely wrong which can easily be proven by examples which show the theory of relativity falls apart if that assumption is made, of which they do not seem to be aware. It makes no sense at all to say such a thing, because a photon does NOT HAVE a perspective according to the theory of relativity, which the physicists who work more closely with relativity thus are more familiar with it know very well:

I am driving my car at the speed of light and I turn on my headlights. What do I see?

You cannot go at the speed of light so the question is hypothetical. Hypothetical questions do not have definitive answers. Only massless particles such as photons can go at the speed of light. As a massive object approaches the speed of light the amount of energy needed to accelerate it further increases so that an infinite amount would be needed to reach the speed of light.

Sometimes people persist: What would the world look like in the reference frame of a photon? What does a photon experience? Does space contract to two dimensions at the speed of light? Does time stop for a photon?. . . It is really not possible to make sense of such questions and any attempt to do so is bound to lead to paradoxes. There are no inertial reference frames in which the photon is at rest so it is hopeless to try to imagine what it would be like in one. Photons do not have experiences. There is no sense in saying that time stops when you go at the speed of light. This is not a failing of the theory of relativity. There are no inconsistencies revealed by these questions. They just don't make sense.

originally posted by: Havick007
Why bother with all this fuss about wormholes then.

I haven't looked it up yet but I'm about to, yet even now saying that a photons travels from point A to B instantaneously no matter the distance seems incorrect.

The concept of wormholes causes us to think of the concept of "distance" in different ways, but it's not such an esoteric concept that we can't think of simple analogies.

Take the Earth for example. Let's say you're at the south pole and want to go to the North pole. You have to travel in a more or less semi-circular path on or above the surface of the Earth, which is not the shortest distance between the poles. The shortest distance would be a straight line, through the center of the Earth, right? But that's impossible, right? Well they did it in a movie but other than that it's impossible with any technology we currently know of, but that's how "wormhole" got it's name, it's named after a worm crawling through an apple, instead of going around the outside.

That's not the best analogy though, a better one is folding space similar to the way you fold a sheet of paper. On the left the paper is unfolded and the straight line is a long distance, but on the right the sheet representing space is folded so the "distance" is not the normal distance, so "distance" becomes ambiguous, is it the distance on the left or the distance shown on the right going through the shortcut?

Things to know about Interstellar (2014) Explained - Part 3


So using the shortcut on the right you don't really have to go faster than light, though someone looking at space from the unfolded perspective of the left view might get the impression you traveled faster than light to go from A to B when you really didn't.

Wormholes have huge theoretical problems so there may not be any such thing as a stable wormhole that can be traveled through, though people are always working on the theory, but for now, wormhole travel is considered a fringe concept.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

If one travelled from point A to B faster than light maybe once you reached point b, you would actually have to wait for the object you were travelling to, to catch up and reach point b as well. Where as using a.wormhole, it's almost instantaneous like a bridge and if you travelled in linear fashion from point a to b, the object at b would no longer be there. It would have moved past that point by the time one arrived unless compensating for motion during travel that is.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

I left school at 15 so you need be extra patient with my nonsense...

My understanding is that as we approach c, time slows down, so doesn't relatitivty dictate that when light travels from point A to B, its instataneous, from lights perspective. Which to my mind suggests that the velocity of c is not really a universe imposed speed limit, its a limit to the reference of time, imposed on the observer.

Which explains why whatever speed the observer is travelling, they will still see light, travelling at the velocity of c. Its not the speed of light that alters, but the obervers reference to time, that changes.

So why does the universe impose this speed/time restriction on the observer. Simply because if it didn't, we couldn't exist. Varying the speed of light would change the strength of molecular bonds and the density of matter itself.

Einstein once wrote about time....

Einstein — knowing that his own time was also running out — wrote a now-famous letter to Besso’s family. “Now he has departed this strange world a little ahead of me,” Einstein wrote of his friend’s passing. “That signifies nothing. For us believing physicists, the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”

a reply to: Havick007

"If it's instant for the wave, why do you observe and are bound by a 20 minute delay on detecting the data."

Because the observer will always be restricted to their local time frame. In which light must travel at a universal constant velocity of c. This may seem pendantic but delayed choice quantum eraser experiments suggest that the very act of observation can change reality. That seeing is in the eye of the beholder.

"And if I left the sun now, at C it would take 8 minutes to get here. Simple"
You havn't included local time dilation. At 0.99999 the speed of light it would only take you 0.2 seconds to cross the entire visible universe - link. Yet observers would see you travelling from the sun at c. So your observations at c would not be the same as their observations.

We may learn a bit more about local time frames when scientist figure out why quasars don't show time dilation.

originally posted by: glend
a reply to: Arbitrageur

I left school at 15 so you need be extra patient with my nonsense...

My understanding is that as we approach c, time slows down,

Not necessarily. For you, your reference frame seems stationary, and it's the other clock in the other frame moving with respect to you that is going slower than your clock. But the person in that frame can think they are stationary, and they see your clock moving more slowly than theirs. In relativity, both are correct, as explained starting at 3 minutes in this video:

Relativity: how people get time dilation wrong


But the general idea can be true in the typical twins paradox where one twin travels to a distant star, then returns to earth in which case the traveling twin is not in a single inertial frame, and in that case everyone can agree the twin who went to the distant star and returned is the one for whom time slowed down. But to say that time therefore stops for a photon is a non-sequitur, it does not follow from that though a number of people incorrectly seem to think so.

so doesn't relatitivty dictate that when light travels from point A to B, its instataneous, from lights perspective.

absolutely, positively not, and if you're still saying that, you don't understand at all the source I cited in my previous post, please re-read it (or read it). You can find some physicists who don't know relativity very well say things like that, and they are wrong. The physicists who know relativity know it's wrong.

Which to my mind suggests that the velocity of c is not really a universe imposed speed limit, its a limit to the reference of time, imposed on the observer.

Which explains why whatever speed the observer is travelling, they will still see light, travelling at the velocity of c. Its not the speed of light that alters, but the obervers reference to time, that changes.

So why does the universe impose this speed/time restriction on the observer. Simply because if it didn't, we couldn't exist. Varying the speed of light would change the strength of molecular bonds and the density of matter itself.

One over-simplified way to look at it is that we are always going the same speed in 4 dimensional space time. So, it's not a speed limit, it's a constant speed, though nobody knows why it's a constant speed.

What happens is that if you're not moving through space, your travel is entirely in time, but as you speed up through space, the less of your constant 4D movement though space-time is available for time, so time slows down for you to an outside observer, though you see time pass normally in your reference frame. It's an imperfect analogy like all analogies, but this video explains it better than I did perhaps. The relativity explanation starts at 4 minutes, but you still need to watch the first 4 minutes to be able to put the relativity part in perspective.

Why can't you go faster than light?

a reply to: Arbitrageur

I appreciate you time and patience Arbitrageur, you definately one of my favourites on ats.

I will check it all out, thank you.

a reply to: glend

I also did not finish high school but it doesn't stop one learning about subjects they find interesting. It may lack of the fundamentals of physics that makes it difficult to piece all this together coherently and mathematically. I wonder in an equation what the out come would be if C's value was changed to zero. Think outside the box and from the reference frame of something at C. Time is zero. If length contraction is taken into account then for the photon even motion would or distance would almost be irrelevant.

I'm missing something (obviously). Your saying one could travel almost instantly across the entire universe in less than a second. I'm gonna need to someone homework on that. The delay isn't a trick of reference frame. It doesn't make sense to me. But as I said I lack the fundamentals and jumped straight into the interesting stuff.. time dilation is one of the most curious effects in the universe.

Don't forget this, even now at this moment (as you read this) you may feel stationary but taking all the factors into account you are actually moving at over 12 million km/h. Orbit, rotation, galactic motion etc
Also, an interesting trick of inertia. Stand and face East and lean forward slowly and then do the same west. You will feel a difference, or maybe it's illusion. Try it. It doesnt prove anything regarding my thread but just an interesting effect, re: the Earth's rotation.

Back to your reply. What of distance and motion at C? Does distance exist does time exist or does it all become one.. do you think. Exceeding C when proven possible should begin to reverse time and the faster one goes the larger distance measure becomes again. Slowly balancing out as per my diagram. The entire wave function becomes observable.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

The problem people can have with a great education (not so much a problem but an issue to consider) is becoming trapped in a paradigm.

It has happened all to often throughout history. Just when people think they have it all worked out, something changes their perspective or thinking to create a new view, explaination or way of thinking.

Time slows down and distance shortens for the photon or something travelling at high speed. Time I understand. Length contraction if that is the correct term seems stranger than dilation. So time has to catch up for the slower observer in a way. For the object at 99% C it's has already traversed the known universe but for the slower reference frame, we observe a delay and have to catch up.. sounds like something I was trying to say in another reply. So, we observe something travel from point to another in a set amount of time and distance. Yet that same object (from it's frame of reference) has already past us by the time we observe it. I need to do more research on that. It's not something I was familiar with.

Why is there a discrepancy in distance and it does seem then that a measurement can change. For the object at high speed the universe would appear minut in size, regarding distance.

a reply to: Havick007

I tried that trick, wow, felt big difference which I wasn't expecting.

"time dilation is one of the most curious effects in the universe"

Agree. Einstein knew that c was a constant throughout the universe but also realized that everything was moving so surmized the only way for c to be constant is for time to dilate the faster objects travelled. This has been tested multiple times. For example muons created in upper atmosphere have very high velocities with very short lifetimes. The number of muons detected on the surface of our planet supports time dialtion etc.

"Does distance exist does time exist or does it all become one"

The other thing that Einstein said is that time runs slower in higher gravitational potentials. This makes me wonder if spacetime is a mathematical construct or attributes of an aether that dicates time, matter (folded spacetime) and 3 dimensional space. The aether not reality but projects our reality..

So time in the aether may not exist. But percolates into the upper levels of the projection.

"Exceeding C when proven possible should begin to reverse time "
Thats an interesting suggestion that I didn't consider when I said previously that light is instantaneous. The brakes for c could be reverse time which always brings you back to c.

wave function

originally posted by: Havick007
a reply to: Arbitrageur

The problem people can have with a great education (not so much a problem but an issue to consider) is becoming trapped in a paradigm.

It has happened all to often throughout history. Just when people think they have it all worked out, something changes their perspective or thinking to create a new view, explaination or way of thinking.

There's some truth to that, for example when Einstein published his theory of relativity which did away with the need for luminiferous aether, most scientists were stuck in the paradigm of believing there had to be an aether so Einstein must be wrong.

So Einstein's idea didn't change the paradigm, when he publised his GR paper in 1915. What it took to change the paradigm was experiment and observation starting in 1919 showing that Einstein's new paradigm was a better match to those observations.

So even if we are stuck in some kind of paradigm, which I admit we may be, the way we will get out of it is the same way, there will have to be some experiments or observations that show the old paradigm is wrong and the new paradigm is right.

Saying we are stuck in a paradigm lends no support to any alternative idea. People could have 100 ideas of a different paradigm, and they could all be wrong, but if they are mutually exclusive, unique ideas, then at least 99 of them have to be wrong if only one is right.

The problem with trying to do theoretical physics without a science education is that you may not even be aware of experiments already done which show some idea already proven wrong, and in the case of c=0 as I explained that's wrong by definition of our measurement systems, so saying c=0 is "not even wrong", it's worse than that since it doesn't even make sense without redefining terms as I already explained.

Time slows down and distance shortens for the photon or something travelling at high speed. Time I understand. Length contraction if that is the correct term seems stranger than dilation. So time has to catch up for the slower observer in a way. For the object at 99% C it's has already traversed the known universe but for the slower reference frame, we observe a delay and have to catch up.. sounds like something I was trying to say in another reply. So, we observe something travel from point to another in a set amount of time and distance. Yet that same object (from it's frame of reference) has already past us by the time we observe it. I need to do more research on that. It's not something I was familiar with.

Why is there a discrepancy in distance and it does seem then that a measurement can change. For the object at high speed the universe would appear minut in size, regarding distance.

Here's a pretty good short youtube clip that can shed some light on that. It talks about muons which are like unstable heavy electrons, and how different distances and different times are perceived by an observer on earth versus what is observed theoretically from the muon's perspective, so if you can watch this a few times and wrap your head around it, you should have a better understanding though it takes years of study to really understand relativity, it did for me and I'm not even an expert on it but I think I understand the concepts in this video pretty well at least:

Impossible Muons

This video is about how terrestrial muons are part of our experimental proof of time dilation, length contraction, and special relativity in general.

originally posted by: glend
a reply to: Havick007

I tried that trick, wow, felt big difference which I wasn't expecting.

People seemed a little surprised when sugar pills seemed to make people feel better than the control group in placebo experiments, but this is why studying people and their perceptions gets so complicated, because people are complicated. So unless you want to specifically study some aspect of human behavior or perception, it's better to find less subjective instruments to make the measurements. For example we have a saying that "a watched pot never boils" which is a popular admission that human perception of time is unreliable (as are many other human perceptions).

It's pretty easy to confirm in experiments using a stopwatch that given all other conditions are the same, watching the pot or not watching the pot makes no difference in how long it takes to boil according to the stopwatch, even if humans come up with a different answer. Scientists of course assume the stopwatch is reliable, and the human unreliable.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

People seemed a little surprised when sugar pills seemed to make people feel better than the control group in placebo experiments

Did you try it though. It's subtle but surprising. Completely explainable(obviously) and non mysterious. But just something that occurred to me that I should try when I was considering our current velocity.

The universe is motion. A truly resting mass on earth or in the universe has not yet been discovered. On earth a table may appear to be resting but it's not. I'm sure you understand that. We are traveling at constant velocity that is balanced in terms of a parrelel and thus don't feel the velocity. We observe and can calculate but feel stationary.

I know this is nothing new and quite basic but what occurred to me is that many people don't even conceptualise it or some that even aren't aware. So to say one is resting and not in motion is always false.


For me to say change C to zero was incorrect. I understand now, thank you for correcting me. The zero concept only relates to the time component, time stops and perhaps even distance does no longer become a factor from that frame.

I wonder if the concept of velocity even exists from the lights frame. May never know here for sure.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

I have some thought provoking questions. I'm not taking the lazy route. I'm curious as to your opinion.

Wormholes have huge theoretical problems so there may not be any such thing as a stable wormhole that can be traveled through, though people are always working on the theory, but for now, wormhole travel is considered a fringe concept.

If one were in proximity to a wormhole. Perpendicular to it along the curve of spacetime. Stars from the linear y plane would appear superimposed on the X. If that makes sense, looking at the wormhole image you uploaded. I've seen similar before. Say you on the left of the wormhole. It's not visible from that perspective but the lensing effects would create distortion and stars would appear to be one one place but actually no where near where they are visible.

Something else that occured, what if the same point of origin for a source of light be visible from here in 2 two or more places simultaneously. Due to lensing, wave curvature etc.

originally posted by: Havick007
Did you try it though. It's subtle but surprising. Completely explainable(obviously) and non mysterious.

What do you think happens and how do you think it can be explained? Have you found any scientific verification of the explanation or is it another placebo type thing where you only feel something different because that's what you expect? If the latter, it's more of an issue of brain function and biology/psychology than having anything to do with the laws of motion. If the former, please post a link to the scientific research you think explains it.

As for trying it, I have tried things like the "watched pot never boils" experiment, and of course "never" is an exaggeration but it does seem to take longer to boil when watching the pot, if I don't use any clock or stopwatch. But if I use a clock or stopwatch, whether I watch it or not makes no difference, so I've learned from that and other experiments to trust calibrated instruments more than my own flawed perceptions. So even if I did try it, I wouldn't necessarily have any more confidence in my own perceptions of that than in the watching the boiling pot experiment.

The universe is motion. A truly resting mass on earth or in the universe has not yet been discovered. On earth a table may appear to be resting but it's not. I'm sure you understand that. We are traveling at constant velocity that is balanced in terms of a parrelel and thus don't feel the velocity. We observe and can calculate but feel stationary.

I know this is nothing new and quite basic but what occurred to me is that many people don't even conceptualise it or some that even aren't aware. So to say one is resting and not in motion is always false.

The theory of relativity is constantly being tested and re-tested, but it has passed every test so far, and it says something else. It says person A and person B can be in motion with respect to each other, and each can think they are the ones at rest and that the other is the one in motion, and the reason both can be correct is because the same 4 dimensional mathematics in general relativity can describe the overall situation and Lorentz transformations allow us to change from one perspective to the other.

originally posted by: Havick007
If one were in proximity to a wormhole. Perpendicular to it along the curve of spacetime. Stars from the linear y plane would appear superimposed on the X. If that makes sense, looking at the wormhole image you uploaded. I've seen similar before. Say you on the left of the wormhole. It's not visible from that perspective but the lensing effects would create distortion and stars would appear to be one one place but actually no where near where they are visible.

So you want me to elaborate on the theoretical problems with wormholes? It's because of those that even speculating on wormholes is difficult when "there are very strong indications that wormholes that a human could travel through are forbidden by the laws of physics" as explained here by a wormhole expert, Kip Thorne.

What Is Wormhole Theory?

The first problem is size. Primordial wormholes are predicted to exist on microscopic levels, about 10–33 centimeters. However, as the universe expands, it is possible that some may have been stretched to larger sizes.

Another problem comes from stability. The predicted Einstein-Rosen wormholes would be useless for travel because they collapse quickly.

"You would need some very exotic type of matter in order to stabilize a wormhole," said Hsu, "and it's not clear whether such matter exists in the universe."

But more recent research found that a wormhole containing "exotic" matter could stay open and unchanging for longer periods of time.

Exotic matter, which should not be confused with dark matter or antimatter, contains negative energy density and a large negative pressure. Such matter has only been seen in the behavior of certain vacuum states as part of quantum field theory.

If a wormhole contained sufficient exotic matter, whether naturally occurring or artificially added, it could theoretically be used as a method of sending information or travelers through space. Unfortunately, human journeys through the space tunnels may be challenging.

"The jury is not in, so we just don't know," physicist Kip Thorne, one of the world's leading authorities on relativity, black holes and wormholes, told Space.com. "But there are very strong indications that wormholes that a human could travel through are forbidden by the laws of physics. That's sad, that's unfortunate, but that's the direction in which things are pointing."

Something else that occured, what if the same point of origin for a source of light be visible from here in 2 two or more places simultaneously. Due to lensing, wave curvature etc.

That doesn't require a wormhole, it can happen with massive objects which bend light around them, for example, an "Einstein Cross" has been observed in telescopes as multiple images of the same star or galaxy.

A new Einstein cross is discovered

originally posted by: Arbitrageur

Impossible Muons

This video is about how terrestrial muons are part of our experimental proof of time dilation, length contraction, and special relativity in general.

Hi, I don't agree with any of it.
Not at all !!

The so called Muons are not fundamental particles but disturbance in electro magnetic field, same like pions or all other "particles" in the particle theory, that is also why they don't last for long time, all of them, because they are not particles but electro magnetic radiation, electro magnetic disturbance to be specific.
Sure the theory say those are particles, but the theory also say light is a particle, a photon.
Photon is just a name for the wave "package", a piece of electro magnetic wave, used for mathematical calculations as needed.
Photon is not a "thing" it's a mathematical number, a concept !

On the other hand all fundamental particles do not decay into anything.. and those are protons and electrons, there are also positrons and anti-protons detected which in our Universe do decay in contact with they counterparts, so I would say, not fundamental, exotic for sure and definitely usable. but not fundamental.

The time dilation thing is just nonsense, time is not a thing that can be changed or manipulated or collected or anything can be done to it or with it, because time is a concept, nothing else.
Time, or exactly said time keeping, is what we humans have developed out of need, so we can keep track of things, like the earth's rotation, which is one day, or earth's orbit around the sun, which is a year. We count events that accrue in constant periodic sequences and count them.
This counting is time keeping. Time keeping is needed for us to survive. There is no time as a thing just time keeping, period !

If we look back at the muons, they are detected, sure, all detectors detect what they are build for to detect, and the idea goes like this...
If we produce them in the laboratory ( easy thing to do some electro magnetic disturbance ) and they decay so fast, this alone is an indicator for, that this is something not fundamental, but created and passing, and still the particle theory takes them as given fundamental blocks of matter, all the quarks and such is just mathematical creations and not real at all.
The detection of muons from cosmic radiation and linking it to time dilation is another scam made up by the theory..


Negative Time Dilation Eternal Photons and other ... are indeed just speculation



Now you will say there are experiments with synchronized clocks that "prove" the time dilation... NOPE !!
If clocks ( machines that count events and do time keeping, counting ) go out of concurrent, look for what mechanism is causing different counting inside the machines, because the counting is what describes time.
There is no "time" as a thing that is changing the counts, the machines tell us what time it is!
The machines are in different gravitational forces or moving with different speeds in the electro magnetic environment.
This is what causes the differences in time keeping.
There is no such thing as time dilation caused by time, there are just different counts!

originally posted by: Havick007
a reply to: Arbitrageur

Time slows down and distance shortens for the photon or something travelling at high speed. Time I understand. Length contraction if that is the correct term seems stranger than dilation. So time has to catch up for the slower observer in a way.

Your posts about time have had me thinking about its true nature for past few days. Then I had an epiphany (for my mind at least ). We think of time in terms of a clock but perhaps that is misleading, it might be better to think of time as a sequence of change, that enters our picture of conciousness (the now).

If time is a sequence of change then enters our conciousness, it cannot be reversed. There is either change, or no-change, not reverse-change.

If Einstein special relativity tells us that time isn't stattic that really means that the sequence of change, isn't static. If change is the result of the unfolding of quantum entanglement's and gravity affects quantum entanglements, Then time will appear to slow down in gravity or for objects travelling at higher velocities.

In actuality, time is a mental fabrication. that doesn't exist.