I believe that my friends are no strangers to time. We are dealing with time every day and every moment. Maybe in the eyes of many people, time has nothing magical and mysterious, it is too ordinary, so is time really ordinary?
Before mankind entered the age of science and technology, the ancients’ understanding of time was the rise of the sun and the change of the seasons throughout the year. In the eyes of the ancients, time is the fairest. No matter who you are, how rich and powerful you are, time will not favor any party. It treats everyone fairly.
For a long time, people have believed that time is passing at the same speed for everyone. After you have passed a day, others have passed a day, you have gone out of decades of time, and others have also gone out. Decades of time. This is the greatness and fairness of time, and it will not be unfair because of differences in one person.
So is time really fair? Does it really flow at the same speed in everyone? As human beings enter the age of science and technology, we are constantly exploring and studying time. From a scientific point of view, time refers to the movement of matter, the continuity of change, and the sequential performance.
Time is a parameter used by humans to describe the process of material movement or the occurrence of events. The determination of time depends on the law of material cycle changes that are not affected by the outside world. The time that human beings spend in daily life is just a time law formulated by humans to better facilitate research and exploration. It is not the true nature of time.
It was Einstein, the great scientist who appeared at the beginning of the 20th century, who really began to explore and study the nature of time. For Einstein, I believe every friend knows that he proposed the famous mass-energy equation and the great theory of relativity.
Einstein was able to secure the first throne of science, mainly relying on the great theory of relativity. Then how did Einstein discover this theory of relativity? In fact, it has a close relationship with time. In 1905, he pointed out in the “Special Theory of Relativity” that the faster an object moves, the slower its time. 10 years later, he pointed out in the “General Relativity” that the stronger the gravitational field of an object, the Time will be slower.
Einstein did not recognize the predecessors’ understanding of time. He discovered the secret hidden in time by observing some phenomena, that is, time is not fixed. Einstein was able to discover the secret of this time mainly by relying on a magical and unexplainable phenomenon, which is the “constant speed of light phenomenon”.
I believe that my friends are no strangers to the speed of light. Scientists have made a lot of effort in researching and exploring the speed of light. In the era before Einstein, scientists always believed that the speed of light would change under different conditions. This was a conclusion drawn under the influence of Newton’s theory of gravity.
But Einstein discovered through experiments that “the phenomenon of constant speed of light”, and this constant speed of light does not mean that the speed of light itself does not change, but that no matter which reference frame you are in, you will observe the speed of light. It’s the same, it won’t change.
Let’s take a simple example: If you are moving against a beam of light at 10% of the speed of light, according to Newton’s laws of mechanics, the speed of this beam of light relative to you should be 110% of the speed of light, but this is not the case in reality. The beam of light is still moving at the speed of light in your eyes, and will not change because you are facing it. In the same way, when you move in the opposite direction with this beam of light, the result is the same.
After Einstein discovered this “constant speed of light phenomenon” and published it, scientists did not believe it, but after a large number of experiments proved that Einstein was right and the speed of light did not change. So why is it so? Until now this mystery has not been solved. Based on the discovery of this phenomenon, Einstein proposed “Special Theory of Relativity” on this basis.
“Special Theory of Relativity” describes the relationship between movement and time. The faster the movement, the slower the entrance will be. The limit of the object’s speed is the speed of light. When the object’s speed reaches the speed of light, conceptually, time will stop. In order to better understand the relationship between exercise and time, we can do a simple experiment.
Suppose there are two, namely Xiao Zhang and Xiao Wang. Xiao Zhang is sitting in a high-speed train with a length of 500 meters and moving in a uniform straight line at a speed of 50 meters per second, while Xiao Wang stands. As a stationary frame of reference on the ground.
Xiao Zhang shot a beam of light from the tail of the train to the head of the train with a flashlight. In Xiao Zhang’s eyes, the light reached the head of the train after 0.000001 seconds. All of this was reasonable and there was nothing wrong with it.
So in Xiao Wang’s eyes, is the time it takes for this light to reach the head also 0.000001 seconds? the answer is negative. In Xiao Wang’s eyes, the beam of light reached the head from the tail. In 0.000001 seconds, the train had advanced 0.00005 meters. In this way, the flying distance of the beam observed by Xiao Wang became 500.00003 meters. This calculation is also reasonable and there is nothing wrong with it.
No matter which reference frame is viewed from, the speed of light is the same and will not change, which means that this beam of light cannot have a speed of 500 million 50 meters per second. So what has changed? There is only time, which means that this beam of light flew in Xiao Wang’s eyes for 0.0000010000001 seconds.
In the above thought experiment, we have seen that time has indeed changed. In the same event, from different perspectives of reference, time is not fixed. Obviously, Xiao Zhang’s speed is faster and Xiao Wang’s speed has slowed down, which means that the faster the speed, the slower the time.
Later Einstein put forward the “General Theory of Relativity”, which explained the phenomenon of time instability in a deeper level, and proposed the relationship between the gravitational field and time. The stronger the gravitational force, the slower the additional time. This conclusion has also been confirmed by a large number of experiments by scientists. Therefore, when we are conducting research on the universe, we need to consider the relationship between gravitational field, speed and time in many cases. For example, all satellite positioning systems , All need to be calibrated according to the relationship between gravity and time described in the “General Relativity”, otherwise it will not work properly at all.
It can be seen that time is not as simple as we think, it may be one of the ultimate mysteries of the universe. To unravel the final mystery of time, perhaps we must first uncover the phenomenon of the constant speed of light. Only when we understand why the speed of light does not change can we finally uncover the mystery of time. Perhaps that will be another wonderful science. world.
