Science
Out of context: Reply #154
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- sarahfailin0
^Re the above convo.
You're right about distance from the center of gravity creating a difference in gravitational force. In fact, since gravity affects time, time actually passes slightly faster at higher elevations. So if you had a twin sibling that that lived at 1 foot higher elevation that you, after a 79 year lifetime, they would be 90 billionths of a second older than you. (http://www.sciencedaily.com/rel...It's called Time Dilation and it actually has a tangible effect once you get further away from the surface of the earth. Astronauts come back with their clocks a little ahead of what they would have been had they stayed on earth. It also is affected by your velocity-- with time passing slower the faster you're moving. At light speed, time for a traveler on a spaceship would come to a stop and they would seem to arrive at any destination instantly, though time would pass normally for everything around them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim…
Finally, it's theorized that if you were to fall into a black hole-- the singularity of which is an infinite curvature of space-time-- and if you were somehow able to stay alive and look outward at space around you, you would actually witness the end of time before just before you hit the singularity. Time passes faster and faster for the outside world as you approach the singularity (relative to you anyway), and in fact time ends when your distance from the singularity = 0. Pretty crazy, eh?