I know I said in my last post that I’ll discuss the butterfly effect, but time dilation caught my attention (thanks to all the remarks on my last post- they blew my mind!!)

Ok so, time dilation is a bit surreal concept. Time is not constant, and according to relativity, time will be measured according to the reference frame relative velocity that is measuring it.

Spacetime and four dimensions
The world has actually 4 dimensions. You’ve heard of 3D. Those three are the space dimensions. The fourth dimension is related to time. It’s actually time X i, where i is iota (square root of -1). Let’s say you are in a 1D space and you go from point A to B. This causes some time to elapse (as you travel).

Actually, you are always traveling through time, but when you are also traveling through space, the time travel gets lesser than you expect.

Let’s say there are two sisters. On their twentieth birthday, one of them goes to space journey on a rocket, going at about 99% the speed of light. She travels for one year and returns back on her 21st birthday. Meanwhile, on earth, 7 years have gone by, and her twin sister is now 27 years old. This is because time stretches about 7 times at 99% of the speed of light. (Remember- time on earth is not equal to time on space) Though time seems same to both sisters (both take 7 hours to get ready for a movie!). But the time relativity has made all the difference. Pretty cool, huh?

Now the question is, can we travel that fast? 99% of the speed of light is not an ordinary speed. Not presently, but I hope one day we can. The other day I was reading a news report about a car that travels with the speed of sound. If that can be done, I’m sure speed of light can be conquered really soon. The problem is that speed of light is so fast that it’s gonna destroy any vehicle that travels that fast. But anyway… I’m sure scientists will find out something.

Immanuel Kant, the German philosopher also said that space and time are a priori facts, and they are basically dependant on human perception.
Newton and Leibniz also had their own theories about space and time.

Basically, we cannot see the 4th dimension of time, because we look at it from a single frame. To understand the property of relativity, you need to have a difference perspective.
If you always stay in a single position, you won’t understand the concept of space. Same goes for time.

I hope this post was understandable. Time dilation is a difficult concept to understand, so all questions are welcome. Also, if you have new info, please share it here.

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