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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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To: Robert DeLong

Photons are the carriers of present, the present of their creation. Since a black hole prevents photons from receding from such a deep gravity well, is time stopped inside a black hole?


41 posted on 04/20/2018 3:03:30 PM PDT by MHGinTN (A dispensational perspective is a powerful tool for discernment)
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To: MHGinTN

No, but devices created to measure time probably stop. 8>)


42 posted on 04/20/2018 3:05:02 PM PDT by Robert DeLong
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To: LibWhacker
"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"

Yep! Just another reason why it's best with the woman on top...

43 posted on 04/20/2018 3:31:56 PM PDT by SuperLuminal (Where is another agitator for republicanism like Sam Adams when we need him?)
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To: Robert DeLong

The devices can’t ‘keep up’


44 posted on 04/20/2018 6:41:43 PM PDT by MHGinTN (A dispensational perspective is a powerful tool for discernment)
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