Would someone please explain time dialation and why it occurs?

Answer 1

This is not an illusion, and not a trick, it is real and has been demonstrated repeatedly in laboratories and accelerators. There are 3 steps to understanding this part of special relativity.

1. Distance = speed x time. Therefore, if you travel at the same speed for twice as long, you will go twice as far, etc.

2. The speed of light in a vacuum is constant for all observers. This is the most difficult part to understand. It is what Einstein figured out, and it shows that there is really no such thing as a "stationary object," only objects that move relative to each other. This means that if you travel toward a star at 90% light speed, then the light from that star will pass you at exactly the speed of light = about 186,000 miles / sec relative to you. If you travel away from the star at 90% light speed, then the light from that star will still pass you at the same exact speed of light = 186,000 miles / second relative to you. This does not make intuitive sense, but it is the way the universe works (so far as we know).

3. Finally, combine these two items into one thought experiment, as Einstein would have done. Picture yourself on an asteroid watching a friend pass by at near light speed in a glass spaceship. As he passes, he shines a flashlight at the glass floor. The beam reflects off the floor and bounces back up to your friend's eye. To your friend, the path that the beam takes is "straight down and straight back up" - like this: | . You see the beam differently, however. Because of the high speed of the ship, you see the beam take a longer angled path down and then back up, like this: \/.

Now since distance = speed x time and since the SPEED of light is constant, then there are only two numbers left to work with ( distance and time) and they must act together. If the distance is longer, then the time must be longer. It is important to understand that the time does not just seem to be longer, it really is longer as measured in your frame of reference. Things that you see happening on the ship take longer than if the ship were not moving. This does not just apply to light beams, it applies to time. Time and distance are linked together and are not fixed but relative, based on the motion of the object in question and the observer.

This is easy to predict using the Lorentz transform equations. Where it gets really interesting is what your friend sees you doing as he passes by (which is the same thing that you see him doing i.e. time slowing down).

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

Actually any speed will cause a minute time dilation. That's how they proved it by putting an Atomic clock in space and synchrnizing it with one on the Earth All it too was going several times faster to make them drift a hair

The basic concept is that if you are 18 and your 38 year old mother takes a round trip to Centauri at half the speed of light when she comes back you are 40 and she's 39.

Answer 3

equation's above this are farely accurate yet old, dialation occurs as mv(m)sq. rather than e=mc sq. for the reason dilated time has no mass but rather primarily force and energy constituting it's elements' the energy eats up the mass , and creates force energy that is constitutionally complete without mass, thus force has no weight from mass, only relative weight from energy, resulting in slightly inverted inertia, only the force/energy exists past the mass stripped point as frissional energy, as light waves. Darkness dilates due to the behavior of a strictly paterned motional state which apparently keeps it at a hyper weightless plasma state. I could go on but you can finish this up easily on your own.

Answer 4

Newton assumed information propagated instantaneously. Newton was wrong.

Annalen der Physik 4 XVII 891-921 (1905)

Information cannot propagate at faster than lightspeed (Lorentz Invariance). The relative velocity of an inertial observer then distorts perceived spacetime. A combination of space and time is locally conserved but not each individually,

ds^2 = [(p_x)^2 + (p_y)^2 + (p_z)^2 - (p_t)^2]
metric signature (+1,+1,+1,-1), Relativity

The scale factor is

beta - sqrt[1-(v^2)/(c^2)]

"v" is velocity, "c" is lightspeed. If t_0, m_0, and l_0 are respectively rest time, mass, and length, then observed

t = (t_0)/beta
m = (m_0)/beta
l = [(l_0)]beta if coming at your nose If passing by, you see

Google
"terrell rotation" 632 hits

GPS satellites have their local time slow (three or four atomic clocks on board) for their orbital velocities versus ground observers (Special Relativity). GPS satellites have their time speed for their being further out of Earth's gravitational field versus ground observers (General Relativity). Net effect is about 200 nsec/day fast versus the ground.

http://metaresearch.org/cosmology/gps-relativity.asp
http://www.phys.lsu.edu/mog/mog9/node9.html
http://relativity.livingreviews.org/Articles/lrr-2003-1/

Answer 5

Time dilation refers to the relativistic effect of moving at very high speed. A result Einstein's theory of relativitiy is the equation of mass and energy (remember e = m x c squared?). A relativistic effect is one that only shows up when you begin to move at an appreciable fraction of the speed of light, relative to something else (an observer).

One thing that Einstein showed is that as an object moves faster, distance decreases, and time moves slower. This is a Fitzgerald-Lorentz contraction of distance, and time dilation. This slowing of time is not obvious to the moving object, only to an observer of the object. According to the observer, time has slowed for the object. For the moving object, time passes normally.

Therefore, time-dilation is a "frame-of-reference", or relativistic effect. It is relative to your frame of reference.

An object having mass increases its mass as it approaches the speed of light, with the mass becoming infinite at the speed of light. Similarly time stops... the ultimate time dilation.

However, since mass obviously can't become infinite, nothing with mass can ever reach the speed of the light. But the interesting obverse of this is that anything that exists that has no rest mass MUST move at the speed of light. If time existed for a massless object, it would disappear at once. BUT... at the speed of light, there is no passage of time, so a massless object can exist at the speed of light, and ONLY at the speed of light.

This is why photons of light must move at, and only at, the speed of light. If they slow down, they disappear in a puff of logic!

Answer 6

In plain language, matter becomes more and more massive as it nears the speed of light, just like in a black hole where time does not exist for this very reason, the ability to move becomes more restricted in very massive matter, events slow, so does time.

Answer 7

uncle als right. now gimme 10 pts

Answer 8

I don't know what the heck is that and I don't know why.