9 ms·
It didn’t bother me so much when I finally understood that the duration perceived by an observer is simply equal to the path integral of distance along their wo
by frutiger 6y ago
It didn’t bother me so much when I finally understood that the duration perceived by an observer is simply equal to the path integral of distance along their worldline.
When you think about it, you will realise there’s almost nothing else it could reasonably be.
- aaomidi 6y agoI don't get what this means at all. Can you try to Eli5
- BlackFly 6y agoTo figure out how far a distance you traveled to get to my house, I need to know which path you took. To figure out how long a time you traveled to get to my house, I need to know which path you took. Our ordinary intuition is instead, "To figure out how long a time you traveled to get to my house, I need to know the time on my clock when you left and the time on my clock when you arrived." But that turns out to be wrong if you care about a high degree of precision or if you were traveling very fast.
- pfortuny 6y agoAlso because there is no meaning for the first value (there is no “synchronicity” between separate clocks).
- andreareina 6y agoMight be reasonable, but it means that comparing timestamps between two observers requires knowing the observers' entire history back to some reference timestamp no? Still a headache.
- jjbinx007 6y agoAlso, if we added the speed of light to an object's speed you'd get really weird results like you'd see a car coming towards you before the car actually arrived. Trying to stay alive in such a world would be quite a challenge.
- moron4hire 6y agoAll the cars I see coming, I see them before they arrive