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'Time is elastic': an extract from Carlo Rovelli's The Order of Time
The Guardian ^ | 4/14/18

Posted on 04/20/2018 2:21:44 AM PDT by LibWhacker

What does it really mean to say that time ‘passes’? Why does time pass faster in the mountains than it does at sea level? The physicist explains in this extract from his latest book

I stop and do nothing. Nothing happens. I am thinking about nothing. I listen to the passing of time. This is time, familiar and intimate. We are taken by it. The rush of seconds, hours, years that hurls us towards life then drags us towards nothingness ... We inhabit time as fish live in water. Our being is being in time. Its solemn music nurtures us, opens the world to us, troubles us, frightens and lulls us. The universe unfolds into the future, dragged by time, and exists according to the order of time. What could be more universal and obvious than this flowing?

Reality is often very different from what it seems. The Earth appears to be flat but is in fact spherical. The sun seems to revolve in the sky when it is really we who are spinning. Neither is time what it seems to be.

Let’s begin with a simple fact: time passes faster in the mountains than it does at sea level. The difference is small but can be measured with precision timepieces that can be bought today for a few thousand pounds. This slowing down can be detected between levels just a few centimetres apart: a clock placed on the floor runs a little more slowly than one on a table.

It is not just the clocks that slow down: lower down, all processes are slower. Two friends separate, with one of them living in the plains and the other going to live in the mountains...

(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...


TOPICS: Books/Literature; Science
KEYWORDS: book; carlorovelli; excerpt; rovelli; stringtheory; theorderoftime; time; timeiselastic
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Thanks, GOPJ. Fascinating. Deserves its own thread.
1 posted on 04/20/2018 2:21:45 AM PDT by LibWhacker
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To: LibWhacker

How long a minute is depends on which side of the bathroom door you are on.


2 posted on 04/20/2018 3:04:28 AM PDT by themidnightskulker (And then the thread dies... peacefully, in it's sleep....)
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To: GOPJ

Thanks, GOPJ. Fascinating. Deserves its own thread.


3 posted on 04/20/2018 3:08:21 AM PDT by LibWhacker
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To: LibWhacker

Bump for later reading


4 posted on 04/20/2018 3:12:20 AM PDT by fso301
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To: themidnightskulker

LOL


5 posted on 04/20/2018 3:13:27 AM PDT by LibWhacker
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To: LibWhacker

“Rubber Band, a-Rubber Band Man...Guaranteed to blow your mind!”


6 posted on 04/20/2018 3:31:03 AM PDT by equaviator (There's nothing like the universe to bring you down to earth.)
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To: LibWhacker
On my little farm, which I rarely leave, I like to say I operate on God’s time. I am crepuscular as to when I wake and sleep.

If you live far from the city, in a place where only the sights and sounds of nature form the passage of time, you become human again. The pretensions of modernity fall from your skin, your mind is at peace.

The dirt over which which you so laboriously toil to provide most all your food, is both the giver of live and your last bed of repose.

The transition is transparent. With each step you see your life and feel your death as molecules everywhere fall to the soil.

7 posted on 04/20/2018 3:47:31 AM PDT by Badboo (Why it is important)
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To: Badboo

giver of “life”


8 posted on 04/20/2018 3:50:02 AM PDT by Badboo (Why it is important)
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To: Badboo
With each step you see your life and feel your death as molecules everywhere fall to the soil.

You must be fun at parties.

9 posted on 04/20/2018 3:54:18 AM PDT by Sirius Lee (In God We Trust, In Trump We MAGA)
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To: LibWhacker

Time is not just a function of the speed of light. It is a function of the frequency of consciousness divided by the speed of light.

As we cleanse our souls, the frequency of consciousness increases and time collapses.

This is why in God’s perfect Love, in Heaven, a day is as a thousand on earth.


10 posted on 04/20/2018 3:59:08 AM PDT by tired&retired (Blessings)
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To: tired&retired

This is why Einstein’s theory of relativity is wrong and he had to assume the speed of light as a constant as he missed the variable “frequency of consciousness” in the formula.


11 posted on 04/20/2018 4:01:55 AM PDT by tired&retired (Blessings)
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To: tired&retired

As consciousness frequency exceeds the frequency of light, one gets the gift of prophesy.


12 posted on 04/20/2018 4:03:24 AM PDT by tired&retired (Blessings)
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To: tired&retired

In meditation, I always perceive any level of consciousness above me as light. When that consciousness comes to a lower level, it gives off light, just as an electron going from an outer orbital to a lower level around the nucleus of the atom.

I see the Holy Spirit as liquid light.

Interesting that scientists are studying the biophotons associated with healing prayers.


13 posted on 04/20/2018 4:08:44 AM PDT by tired&retired (Blessings)
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To: tired&retired
"This is why Einstein’s theory of relativity is wrong..."

That Einstein guy is so overrated. My theory is much better.

14 posted on 04/20/2018 4:16:19 AM PDT by UnwashedPeasant (I told you so)
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To: LibWhacker
i know in extreme stress situations time expands even though it's only your perception of it
15 posted on 04/20/2018 4:25:32 AM PDT by Chode (You have all of the resources you are going to have. Abandon your illusions and plan accordingly.)
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To: LibWhacker

btt


16 posted on 04/20/2018 4:42:06 AM PDT by Cvengr ( Adversity in life & death is inevitable; Stress is optional through faith in Christ.)
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To: LibWhacker
This was new to me. From the article:
It can hardly be pure coincidence that, before gaining a university position, the young Einstein worked in the Swiss Patent Office, dealing specifically with patents relating to the synchronisation of clocks at railway stations. It was probably there that it dawned on him: the problem of synchronising clocks was, ultimately, an insoluble one.

In other words, only a few years passed between the moment at which we agreed to synchronise clocks and the moment at which Einstein realised that it was impossible to do so exactly.

A more in depth article on the same subject:

https://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/24/science/science-historian-work-peter-galison-clocks-that-shaped-einstein-s-leap-time.html

Einstein was remarkably in the right place at the right time with the right idea. All of his miracle papers of 1905 treated particles as if they were real, something almost forbidden by the physics community at the time. Einstein's position as an outsider really helped.

17 posted on 04/20/2018 5:03:16 AM PDT by Moonman62 (Give a man a fish and he'll be a Democrat. Teach a man to fish and he'll be a responsible citizen.)
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To: LibWhacker

Is time really slower the closer you get to the core of the earth, or is it simply that mechanical instruments are affected more by the forces of gravitational pull on objects closer to the the core of the earth? I think time is constant, and it’s just devices run at different speeds as they move further from the core of the earth and the effects of gravitational pull upon objects.


18 posted on 04/20/2018 5:05:40 AM PDT by Robert DeLong
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To: UnwashedPeasant

Time to move on.


19 posted on 04/20/2018 5:06:34 AM PDT by Big Red Badger (UNSCANABLE in an IDIOCRACY!)
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To: LibWhacker

Time is applying numbers to the reality of motion of objects. Go see St Thomas of Aquinas to see how he explains it.


20 posted on 04/20/2018 5:06:34 AM PDT by I want the USA back (Leftism is an elaborate system for hiding shame behind a cheap mash of virtue. -Klavan.)
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