ronjanec wrote:
Kwalish Kid: I have read this comment in a book by a physicist and no I can't remember the name of the book at this time.

ronjanec wrote:
If you are implying that I am wrong about this belief then why does every physicist I know of also believe "time slowed down" because one of the atomic clocks slowed down in the famous experiment?

Perhaps the confusion is due to the constant change, that we conceptualize through the temporal "now".

An Intelligent Horse wrote:
There are a lot of very basic problems with the question. I don't want to sound rude or condescending, but its hard when there have not only been numerous posts on the subject but "Ronjanec" refuses to cite any physicist that believes in something totally opposite of such a fundamentally sound issue. I mean god, Einstein, one of the most famous scientists of all-time, dealt and defined a lot of our understanding in theoretical physics. He answered this question several times, but I digress. I'll address each question individually.


I would really love a citation because any educated scientist clearly knows that your proposed statement is wrong.


Why do you say 'in the famous experiment' and yet you have never referenced any experiment whatsoever. Guessing, I think you are talking about Einstein's experiment to prove his theory of relativity using atomic clocks traveling on jets that were traveling at just above the speed of sound (767 mph.) It proved Einstein's theory (one of them) that time is not constant and can change depending on how fast the subject being timed is moving. The experiment showed that time "sped" up on the jet -- that is, there was less time elapsed on the atomic clock on the jet than the one on the runway which was used as the "control" in that experiment. If you need me to clarify I will, but I think you can get the basic jist of it.
An atomic clock is simply a way to measure time. If an atomic clock slows down, it doesn't cause time to slow down -- it shows that time has already slowed down. A simple way to explain it would be cause and effect. The cause is time slowing down, the effect is that the atomic clock slows down as well.
One last thing: no matter how fast time is actually moving, for a person experiencing it, it will always feel the same. The only way they would know its different from any other period of time passing is if they stood outside the "aura" of the period and looked in. NOTE: The person looking in would have to be experiencing time at a different pace to know it was any differrent. This can illustrated with a very effective example. Say there is one person on a train and one person on the train platform. Technically, as proved in Einstein's plane experiment, the person on the train's time is actually moving slightly faster than the person on the train platform (nothing too extraordinary, maybe a millionth of a second faster.) The person on the train platform looks at the person on the passing train and sees the trian zip by chugging along at 70 mph. They conclude the traingoer is experiencing time at a much faster rate, even though to the person on the train, everything seems normal time-wise.
In conclusion, this is a widely accepted/known idea, and I'm wondering how you could get the whole clock causes time idea and what physicist could have instilled such a preposterous thought in your head (I'm guessing you made up a physicist that believes this so you don't look stupid, especially because you can't cite one as addressed earlier.) I'm also wondering if this was a question on a homework assignment, because it sounds like a question they might ask. Anyways, hope I answered your question.

Foxpriest, then... (#424) wrote:
Is this another word problem? When we speak of time moving, we obviously don't mean traveling through space. This is the "movement" of time forward.

Einstein wrote:
If we wish to describe the motion of a material point, we give the values of its co-ordinates as functions of the time. Now we must bear carefully in mind that a mathematical description of this kind has no physical meaning unless we are quite clear as to what we understand by "time." We have to take into account that all our judgments in which time plays a part are always judgments of simultaneous events. If, for instance, I say, "That train arrives here at 7 o'clock," I mean something like this: "The pointing of the small hand of my watch to 7 and the arrival of the train are simultaneous events."

It might appear possible to overcome all the difficulties attending the definition of "time" by substituting "the position of the small hand of my watch" for "time." And in fact such a definition is satisfactory when we are concerned with defining a time exclusively for the place where the watch is located; but it is no longer satisfactory when we have to connect in time series of events occurring at different places, or--what comes to the same thing--to evaluate the times of events occurring at places remote from the watch.

We might, of course, content ourselves with time values determined by an observer stationed together with the watch at the origin of the co-ordinates, and co-ordinating the corresponding positions of the hands with light signals, given out by every event to be timed, and reaching him through empty space. But this co-ordination has the disadvantage that it is not independent of the standpoint of the observer with the watch or clock, as we know from experience. We arrive at a much more practical determination along the following line of thought.