Tim and His Stop Watch. A Lesson in time distortion.

 A 4D Physics Tale for Young Minds.

Tim is a clever young lad who has a 20 minute walk (1 mile) to school every school day.  Tim's mother gave him a nice durable stop watch to help him make sure he made it to school on time every day. One tick each second. If he left the house at 7:40, and walked steadily along the way it was a nice easy stroll and he was always in his seat by 8:00am. 1200 ticks.  12 blocks.  100 ticks per block. Two steps per tick.  So 7:40am was always when he left.   

There was a small neighborhood grocery store between his house and the school. A distraction. Two minutes (120 ticks) from home. Some days he would pause there to spend a nickel or dime if he had either.  That usually took 3 minutes (180 ticks) of the trip.  What Tim realized was that he had already spent 5 minutes (300 ticks), but still had 18 minutes (1080 ticks) of walking to get to school. He knew if he ran he could stretch those 15 minutes (900 ticks) to cover 18 minutes (1080 ticks) of walking distance in just 15 minutes.  The store distraction slowed down his ticks per distance travelled to a stop. Running stretched his ticks to cover more distance per tick. But Tim was panting and sweating when he got to school. Running required more work than walking would have needed. 

Another day Tim wanted to get to school early so he could have time to finish his homework before class started.  His homework was in his classroom desk. He realized that if he could run the whole way he could get 20 minutes (1200 ticks) worth of distance with just 15 minutes (900 ticks) and have 5 minutes (300 ticks) to work on his homework.  He did make it to school with 5 spare minutes, but again he spent more energy to get there.  Tim learned that he would need some eggs and bacon and toast and juice for breakfast on those running days.  On walking days a bowl of cereal with milk was enough.  Speeding up requires more energy. 

Tim's Grandmother lives 1091 miles away.  Tim had a dream about using his 1200 ticks to visit her.  His dream said it was easy, just 1,309,200 ticks of his stopwatch to walk there.  363 hours and 40 minutes.  But eating enough breakfast to get there in 1200 ticks may be impossible. Great Great Grandpa Albert would have agreed.  

One Person, One Slice of Cosmic Time, and One Blue World.

To understand very complex phenomenon it helps to isolate one fraction, and see just how it works.  That leaves the complex as just extrapolation of the simple realizations.   

This is about time, aging, and gravity and how they are derived when a blue world shows up. SpaceTime is a 3D volume, aging.   To simplify that complexity we can look at one 2D slice of time, and the cosmic aging rate it has.  

One 2D slice.  One Occupant.

Our 1D occupant, residing in that slice, is aging at 1 second of aging for every 1 second of cosmic time. 1:1.  

One Blue World.  Earth Perhaps? 

When a blue world decides to reside in that slice it centers itself there.  But now our occupant has been offset above the cosmic slice. The radius of the blue world above, where it ages faster.  It is now aging a tiny fraction faster that 1.  Perhaps 1.0000007 to 1.0 of cosmic time. 0.0000007 of potential time unused. The occupant, to get back to the cosmic slice, has to try and push the blue ball down at least 1/2 it's diameter to reach the slice. The inertia of the blue ball is too large to overcome.  Where it's center is now is where the occupant wants to be.  That push against the blue ball is gravity.  Persistent downward push. Somewhat pointless. 

Now extrapolate.  Every dust mote, rain drop, dead leaf, person or beast, is trying to get back to their cosmic aging slice. Ninety degrees down from wherever they are on the blue world. That try is gravity. All slices of cosmic time meet at the center of the blue world. 

The argument and the mistake.  Classic assumptions envision digging down into the blue world would prove no point on a slice of cosmic time can be there. The mistake is that we aren't aiming for the center.  We are trying to move the world out of our way to get down to where it's center was.  

There is one other way to change Aging time against Cosmic time. You can float free in space and be 1:1 with aging.   But speed up across cosmic time and your aging ticks cover more time with each tick.  Aging slows down as you go faster. Passing time with aging unused. 

Any direction, away from our 1D position

Cosmic time is a fixed value.  Aging is what varies depending on where you are (on a blue world or not) and/or how fast you are translating within the slice.   

Please leave a comment if there is anything unclear about this very simple analogy. 

4D