is time constant?

Answer 1

No, time is not constant. There is no absolute time, where time passes at the same rate for everyone everywhere. Einstein prove that back in 1905 with his publication of Special Relativity. How fast time appears to pass is dependent on how fast you're traveling and how strong the gravitational force is pulling on you.

What this means is that if you're moving very very fast, like close to the speed of light, then time passes very slow for you. Similarly, if you're very close to a very strong gravitational field, like near a blackhole, time will passes very slow for you too. And if you've fallen into a blackhole, time will have appear to have stop for you when you reach the blackhole's event horizon (that is where gravity is so strong that not even light can escape).

Answer 2

Relative to what? I read somewhere there is an atomic clock that uses the vibration time of an atom + measurements of the exact rotation of the earth and other methods to calculate time. This seems pretty constant to me, you cant exactly change the rate of these things easily...

Or do you want to take a step back and say, no time is not constant, in the 1970's people had so much time on their hands even with a full time job. now, in the 00's people hardly have any time left with jobs and other activities...

Answer 3

I'm afraid not! Pity, isn't it, it would make life so much easier... :P

Enough of that now, let me explain - Time is not constant - the only universal constant in the, uh, Universe, is c - the speed of light, and it is so important that it's included in Einstein's famous equation E = Mc^2.

But I digress - time is not constant - while it will always appear to be travelling at the same rate from YOUR point of view, that is, you won't drop into bullettime like our friend Neo anytime soon, according to General Relativity, time is a personal phenomenon, something that is not the same for everyone. To be blunt:

The faster you go, the slower time travels for you relative to someone travelling slower than you are - and when I say travelling, I mean velocity.

That is to say, if your velocity is higher, time goes slower for you. Let me put it this way - in the Twin Paradox mentioned by a previous poster. Two identical twins born only seconds apart decide to check up on Einstein's theory. One stays on Earth, let's call her twin A, while the other gets in a rocket and goes into orbit, let's call her twin B. The rocket twin B is in travels around the earth, orbiting faster and faster and faster until, after expending obscene amounts of energy, reaches a velocity of around 0.98 c. Twin B travels at this speed for a certain period, and then slows down and comes back down to Earth.

When she arrives back, she is astonished to find that while she has only aged 6 months, Twin A has aged decades, and is now on her deathbed! Essentially, time for Twin A has gone faster than time for Twin B - as they are now decades apart in age.

This effect has been proven, although not in such a dramatic way - atomic clocks have been whizzed around the earth, while another stays on the ground. Despite being perfectly synchronized before the experiment begins, the atomic clock that whizzes around the earth always ends up a few milliseconds behind the one that stays put.

Answer 4

Two things. 1) the concept of 'time' is man made so any problems with it relate to its inception. 2) In keeping with the man made concept it has unequivocally been proven that mans 'time' is not constant. Several experiments have shown this. A simple one was the cesium clock experiment where two cesium beam clocks were synchronized, one left on the ground and one placed in a jet that was flown at heigh speeds for a period of time. It is reproducible that the clock that was moving will indicate that less time had elapsed relative to the grounded one.

Answer 5

Time exists everywhere with no beginning and no end with no points of reference or boundaries. We move within time and percieve it as a measured constant forward relative to our physical location in the universe.
I see it like this. Movement within time flows fluently from one moment to the next without leaving a trace of the previous moment.
Write a word in the air with your finger, we can choose what to write, we can write the word any way we choose and we can remember the word that we wrote, but the word we wrote does not exists leaving it possible for an infinite number words to be written in the same time space

Answer 6

The whole universal event perceived as time is actually timeless to a single point, I think. I suppose it's mostly the unique optical parameters of our human eyes and visual reception of in-coming electromagnetic waves, in some function with our own energy fields, and, most likely, the interfering energy from other matter around us, that leads our consciousness to perceive time in the erroneously linear way we do.

Answer 7

No. Read 'Wrinkles in Time', by George Smoot. Better yet, get familiar with Relativity.


Doug

Answer 8

It's relative!!See Einsten's Theory in wikypedia

Answer 9

YES if you mean, for example, that one second is always the same length as any second anytime... One second never goes longer or shorter...

BUT, the theory of relativity equations try to disprove these and even made tha TWIN PARADOX...

Answer 10

No.

It is dependent on reference frame, and specifically relative speed and the stree-energy tensor.