The faster you go, the slower you age, but...

Originally posted by DenyObfuscation
What evidence is there that biological processes are slowed?

Because like clocks, we are made from matter.

I assume....

reply to post by Biigs


Take this for example. Two atomic clocks are synchronized on Earth. One is placed on a satellite in geosynchronous orbit. The orbiting clock will tick faster than the one on Earth however it will return to the same point in the sky at the same Earth time (or it may be every 23 hours 56 minutes and change) everyday regardless of the increased elapsed time the orbiting clock displays.

Assume you can consistently hold your breath for 60 seconds max. Now you're in orbit on board the satellite. Will you be able to hold your breath for less than, more than or for 60 seconds max according to the faster ticking clock?

I'm not saying I know the answer, I'm searching for one I can believe with confidence. Regardless of the answer, what evidence do we have to support it?

reply to post by DenyObfuscation


60 seconds is always 60 seconds to you. But to people on earth it will seem longer/shorter to them. That's the way I understand it.

reply to post by drock905


I get what you're saying but I have doubts about that actually being the case. I just want some evidence, I guess. I get the time dilation with clocks, I'm not certain it pertains to biology(?).

reply to post by DenyObfuscation


As an example:

So your asking that if a astronaut whose heart rate is 60bpm got on a spaceship slowly increasing his speed to 99% light speed and were to measure his heart rate if it would slow down?

reply to post by drock905


Something like that but within the realm of possibility. Something perhaps that has actually occurred in a study by NASA. Everything I've read on time dilation with regard to aging seems to be theory and possibly speculation.

Time is the movement of particles in an atom (Electrons and a compact nucleus of protons and neutrons).

If they are moving fast they will react to other atoms faster, if they are slowed down (by being accelerated through space) the atom moves slower and so will react slower to other atoms around it.

Think of a match being lit, you have a chemical compound at the end, once struck, the head of the match burns through the compound. Every time you light that match in your hand it will burn the same speed to you, weather you are moving through space or not. However, the faster you go, the slower an observer would see the match burn.

reply to post by Biigs

Time is the movement of particles in an atom

What does that actually mean?

Look at this

researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Boulder, Colo., registered differences in the passage of time between two high-precision optical atomic clocks when one was elevated by just a third of a meter or when one was set in motion at speeds of less than 10 meters per second.
www.scientificamerican.com...

Is this an example of actual TIME differential between the clocks or just a difference in timekeeping accuracy caused by changing conditions? They are not both "accurate" as only one would be capable of keeping proper time, say with respect to a sidereal day.

Originally posted by DenyObfuscation
reply to post by Biigs

 

Time is the movement of particles in an atom

What does that actually mean?

Look at this

researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Boulder, Colo., registered differences in the passage of time between two high-precision optical atomic clocks when one was elevated by just a third of a meter or when one was set in motion at speeds of less than 10 meters per second.
www.scientificamerican.com...

Is this an example of actual TIME differential between the clocks or just a difference in timekeeping accuracy caused by changing conditions? They are not both "accurate" as only one would be capable of keeping proper time, say with respect to a sidereal day.

They are perfectly accurate. When subjected to speed through space or gravity they are always as accurate and never "incorrect". When you subject one of the two clocks to speed or gravity that you do not to the other, their times will start separating, to each clock, its running on time, you only realise that the effect of the speed/gravity has, when you compare them to each other.

Lets take it to the extreme.

two clocks, both 100% accurate. One subjected to instantaneous acceleration to 99.999999% the speed of light the other stationary. Now lets say that at any given moment you can read each clocks time. The clock that is stationary waits one year exactly. The other is accelerated to speed and left at that speed for the year. When the year is up to the first clock, we use our magic to check both times, first stationary clock says 1 year, the other says barly a second has gone buy.

The first clock is a year older and the other has barely aged at all, but are now one light year apart.

reply to post by Biigs

They are perfectly accurate. When subjected to speed through space or gravity they are always as accurate and never "incorrect".

I don't see that to be the case. I'll try to explain why.

Take the definition of a second

Under the International System of Units (via the International Committee for Weights and Measures, or CIPM), since 1967 the second has been defined as the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom.[1] In 1997 CIPM added that the periods would be defined for a caesium atom at rest, and approaching the theoretical temperature of absolute zero, and in 1999, it included corrections from ambient radiation.[1] This definition refers to a caesium atom at rest at a temperature of 0 K (absolute zero). Absolute zero implies no movement, and therefore zero external radiation effects (i.e., zero local electric and magnetic fields). The second thus defined is consistent with the ephemeris second, which was based on astronomical measurements.
en.wikipedia.org...

There seem to be some tight limits on that definition. I don't think atomic clocks are "automatically" accurate. They need to be calibrated for their conditions, no?

Originally posted by DenyObfuscation
There seem to be some tight limits on that definition. I don't think atomic clocks are "automatically" accurate. They need to be calibrated for their conditions, no?

That's a very complicated question to answer. The answer is sort of yes and sort of no. As always, the devil is in the detail.

Bias and uncertainty are two different things. We can make the clocks relatively free of bias, but the uncertainty will never go away, though it gets better all the time and is now somewhere around one second in 130 million years. This graph shows the uncertainty improvements made over the years (There's an F2 not shown that's slightly better than F1, which would be around 10^-16 on the lower right):

www.nist.gov...


Since the NIST-F2 clock is designed to work on Earth, the problem with putting it in space isn't that it would be inaccurate, it's that it wouldn't work at all. It's designed to throw the cesium up against the force of gravity and measure it as it falls back down. So, if there's no gravity to pull it back down, it won't go through the microwave cavity as shown in step 3, and the clock just won't function.

FIGURE 3: Gravity pulls the ball of cesium atoms back through the microwave cavity. The microwaves partially alter the atomic states of the cesium atoms.

If there's no gravity, it won't work, which hopefully is obvious in this diagram, since gravity pulls the cesium through the microwave cavity.

But it's rather easy to re-design the clock to work in space, by disabling the parts that deal with gravity.

I would slightly amend your statement about calibration...it's not so much a calibration issue. I'd say the clock must be designed to operate in the environment in which it's intended to be used. It would be possible to make an improved design that would operate in multiple environments if necessary, but the NIST fountain clocks don't currently have such a design as it's not currently needed.

The temperature of the cesium atoms is modulated by the lasers so there's not much we would need to do in the way of calibration or correcting for temperature differences.

reply to post by Arbitrageur

I would slightly amend your statement about calibration...it's not so much a calibration issue. I'd say the clock must be designed to operate in the environment in which it's intended to be used.

In the context of cesium clocks on Earth, in orbit or in between I'm assuming that the time dilation occurs due to a change in the rate of oscillation between the ground state levels of the atoms which in turn is due to at least a change in gravity. As for the effects of velocity alone, I'm thinking that maybe velocity alone wouldn't have an effect. Like I said before, all velocity we've observed in experiments occurs within gravity fields and maybe it's actually inertia(?) that causes the dilation rather than speed. Just a thought.

I'd say the clock must be designed to operate in the environment in which it's intended to be used.

I've been saying that for awhile now, just for that reason and others. As always, I appreciate the reply.

Originally posted by DenyObfuscation
I'm thinking that maybe velocity alone wouldn't have an effect. Like I said before, all velocity we've observed in experiments occurs within gravity fields and maybe it's actually inertia(?) that causes the dilation rather than speed.

You did just cite the study where velocity and gravity were independent variables and they saw each effect, here: www.abovetopsecret.com...

So if you take that study, when they looked at velocity, let's say you wanted to look at "inertia?" instead of velocity. How would you alter the experiment to determine that?

It does get rather complicated. Here's an interesting pdf on the evolution of precision timekeeping if you're interested, and this also includes the graph with the F2 clock that was missing from the graph above:

NIST Primary Frequency Standards and the realization of the SI Second

It explains how they can consistently get the temperature of the cesium atoms below a microkelvin, which is pretty interesting:

There are numerous laser cooling techniques, but cesium fountains generally implement a scheme known as optical molasses. This technique exerts a damping force on the atoms by using three pairs of identical oppositely directed lasers (Fig. 16). The lasers are tuned to a frequency slightly below the optical resonance of the atoms. Atoms at the intersection of the six laser beams are cooled to a temperature of 1 μK or below in a few hundred milliseconds. As if they were moving through thick molasses, the cold cesium atoms slow down to about 1 cm/s, as opposed to their ~100 m/s velocity at room temperature. This allows a large sample or “ball” of atoms to be gathered together and confined in one place.

This explains why the temperature constraint mentioned in your previous source isn't such an issue, because it's how the measurements are made with this type of clock, at near absolute zero.

Time travel is perhaps one of the greatest genres I like to read about. And even though I generally love stuff like this, it has a tendency to make my head spin.

An aspect that use to give me problems relating to was that by looking up at the distant stars is in essence a step back in time as the light from such is arriving perhaps many if not hundreds of thousands of years ago, and perhaps what were viewing actually does not exist anymore.

Sill I love how it makes my head hurt.

Originally posted by DenyObfuscation

Actually it's the other way. A clock ticks slower in higher gravity.

If that was the case, the universe simply wouldnt be. [quote]
What evidence is there that biological processes are slowed?

Maybe nasa has some evidence of this

Originally posted by Angelic Resurrection

Originally posted by DenyObfuscation

Actually it's the other way. A clock ticks slower in higher gravity.

If that was the case, the universe simply wouldnt be.

Well it is the case and yet the Universe still seems to simply be.

One more time, just for you. The clocks on GPS sats run fast despite their increased velocity relative to Earth. Being in an orbit higher than 1900 miles, the net effect of the decrease in gravity allows the clocks to run faster. That's just the way it is. If you disagree then please explain why.

ETA: Why do you think the Universe wouldn't exist just because clocks tick slower in higher gravity?

What does the behavior of a clock subjected to different conditions have to do with TIME?

Quote from www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu...

Because an observer on the ground sees the satellites in motion relative to them, Special Relativity predicts that we should see their clocks ticking more slowly (see the Special Relativity lecture). Special Relativity predicts that the on-board atomic clocks on the satellites should fall behind clocks on the ground by about 7 microseconds per day because of the slower ticking rate due to the time dilation effect of their relative motion.

Further, the satellites are in orbits high above the Earth, where the curvature of spacetime due to the Earth's mass is less than it is at the Earth's surface. A prediction of General Relativity is that clocks closer to a massive object will seem to tick more slowly than those located further away (see the Black Holes lecture). As such, when viewed from the surface of the Earth, the clocks on the satellites appear to be ticking faster than identical clocks on the ground. A calculation using General Relativity predicts that the clocks in each GPS satellite should get ahead of ground-based clocks by 45 microseconds per day.

The combination of these two relativitic effects means that the clocks on-board each satellite should tick faster than identical clocks on the ground by about 38 microseconds per day (45-7=38)! This sounds small, but the high-precision required of the GPS system requires nanosecond accuracy, and 38 microseconds is 38,000 nanoseconds. If these effects were not properly taken into account, a navigational fix based on the GPS constellation would be false after only 2 minutes, and errors in global positions would continue to accumulate at a rate of about 10 kilometers each day! The whole system would be utterly worthless for navigation in a very short time. This kind of accumulated error is akin to measuring my location while standing on my front porch in Columbus, Ohio one day, and then making the same measurement a week later and having my GPS receiver tell me that my porch and I are currently about 5000 meters in the air somewhere over Detroit.

If the satellites speed was many times faster to counter the lack of gravity, there would be no need to set the clocks "slower".

Originally posted by DenyObfuscation

Originally posted by Angelic Resurrection

Originally posted by DenyObfuscation

Actually it's the other way. A clock ticks slower in higher gravity.

If that was the case, the universe simply wouldnt be.

Well it is the case and yet the Universe still seems to simply be.

One more time, just for you. The clocks on GPS sats run fast despite their increased velocity relative to Earth. Being in an orbit higher than 1900 miles, the net effect of the decrease in gravity allows the clocks to run faster. That's just the way it is. If you disagree then please explain why.

ETA: Why do you think the Universe wouldn't exist just because clocks tick slower in higher gravity?

What does the behavior of a clock subjected to different conditions have to do with TIME?

edit on 17-3-2013 by DenyObfuscation because: (no reason given)

I've explained all this in the other thread 'opposing mainstream physics ' Look it up if have that bad a memory.

reply to post by Biigs


Good stuff there. I've read that and posted some of it as recommended reading earlier in the thread. My question remains unanswered. What does the behavior of a clock subjected to differing conditions have to to with time itself?

Observe a second hand on a clock. It ticks one second at a time (accuracy is not important in this example). However as you move from the center of the clock outward, the speed of the second hand increases. Regardless of how small, this should cause time dilation within the second hand itself yet that will never happen.

reply to post by DenyObfuscation


I think your concept of time is screwed with the use of clocks, a clock is nothing more than a fixed, predictable frequency and a method of recording and tracking (and predicting) the 'ticks'. Time does what it does, regardless of any clocks or observers.

Time, is the effect of how matter reacts to its surrounding matter and energy. If the local time of that matter is slowed (due to gravity or speed through space) then it reactions to its surrounding matter and energy is slowed down - but only to an external observer.