When you think about it, time is an arbitrary construct — it's our way of making sense of growing up and growing old. According to Einstein's own theories, time moves differently for someone below sea level than for someone situated on the highest peaks on the planet (according to some studies, "at sea level you age one-billionth of a second less every year than you would if you lived on top of Mt. Everest."). This is due to a phenomenon posited by general relativity called gravitational time dilation. The logic behind gravitational time dilation is fairly simple: Objects with a lot of mass create a strong gravitational field. This gravitational field noticeably warps the fabric of spacetime around these objects, producing what we know as gravity. When a stream of light particles passes by an object with sufficient gravity, the stream of photons traveling at the speed of light would appear to bend. What's even more interesting is that mass can warp the very fabric of time itself, causing it to move slower or faster depending on how massive the object is, and how strong the object's gravitational pull is, which is where time dilation really becomes wonky to us. Read more...
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