why does time slow the closer to a higher gravitational field or if matter is sped up?

Question

Try to explain in general terms, without details into general or special relativity, can use some, what is the correlation between speed and high gravitational field in slowing time?

Answer 1

simply put, the closer something is to the speed of light, the slower time is going to seem to an outside observer. because gravity distorts space/time, high gravitational pulls can actually alter time...

i dont know how else to explain it without going into relativity...

-p

Answer 2

Someone a lot smarter than me once developed a theory that time and light are relative - the speed of light is the speed of time. Photons have mass and you can demonstrate this in a lab test. Gravity affects all things which have mass. Light (photons) take time to travel and have mass and are thus affected by gravity. I personally do not believe that gravity can have any effect on elapsed time - what's happen has happened and that cannot be changed. A phenomenon is that because light takes time to travel we can look into space (with a powerful telescope) at a point where a planet once was and it will still be there. Because of the distance, the light is only now arriving.

Answer 3

Imagine you are in a spaceship moving at 3/4 the speed of light. The length of the spaceship is exactly 1,000 meters, and there is a sensor at the other end of the ship.

Meanwhile there is someone on the ground watching you.

You turn on a flashlight and aim it at the sensor.

To both of you that beam of light travels at 300,000 meters per second....Yet for you the beam of light has only traveled 1,000 meters. For the outside observer the beam has traveled 1,000 meters PLUS the distance the ship has moved in that brief period of time.

Distance = velocity * time

For both of you the velocity is equal...yet his distance is greater.

The only way for that to happen is if your time is smaller (or shorter) than his.