|
> Relativity does tell us the speed of time - it's the speed of light. I forget the name of the book, but it was trying to convey intuitions about relativity (first special, then general). It’s very easy to make the mistake of trying to understand space and time first, concepts we think we intuit, but in relativity these are somewhat higher-level concepts. Instead, start with what the most fundamental part of the theory and go from there: the speed of light is constant. Accept that first. It’s the comfort zone. You can always return safely to this point. So, when moving to space and time, the book explained it like this: everything moves at the speed of light, at all times. It’s just that instead of x,y,z – we add t, time, as well. So for an object that’s still, all it’s movement is through the time dimension. Conversely, an object that moves incredibly fast, like a photon, already “used” it’s speed in the spatial dimensions, so it doesn’t “age” in terms of time. This is just special relativity, but I liked this approach. It’s basically embracing the theory first instead of trying to shoehorn it into the world we have so many misconceptions about. |