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173 points belter | 12 comments | | HN request time: 1.075s | source | bottom
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nyc111 ◴[] No.41870842[source]
I would really appreciate if people writing these types of articles first give rigorous and unique definitions of space and time.
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1. ziofill ◴[] No.41892968[source]
My favourite explanation (which IIRC is in a book by Brian Greene) is that you can think that everything always moves at the speed of light in a 4D spacetime. That way, if you stand still, you're moving only along time, and as you tilt your velocity vector more and more toward the space dimensions you have to travel more slowly along the time dimension. At the limit you are moving at the speed of light along some space axis and technically your time is "frozen".
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2. at_a_remove ◴[] No.41893042[source]
Or as I tell people, kidding on the square, we're trapped in a time machine hurtling us into the future at the rate of one minute every sixty seconds! It is important you say that last bit in a panicked, breathless voice.

My God, that means every three hundred sixty-five days or so, we'll have gone forward a year!

replies(1): >>41893341 #
3. ◴[] No.41893341[source]
4. colordrops ◴[] No.41893361[source]
But then it gets weird and the time axis changes scale relative to other elements in space.
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5. Ringz ◴[] No.41893463[source]
Thee is no „Stillstand“, you can’t stand still relative to anything in the universe.
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6. d1sxeyes ◴[] No.41894179[source]
Hm. That’s a possibility. As I understand it though, an infinitely massive object would not move in space, and would experience time at the absolute rate of one second per second.

Although that sounds theoretically impossible, I would remind you that somehow the opposite seems to be possible (a particle with zero mass that moves through time at a rate of zero seconds per second), despite that not making a lot of sense to a layperson.

Footnote: Talking about time in seconds makes very little sense here because our notion of time is so heavily linked to how light moves through space, but hopefully my point is clear. Maybe someone has a better unit we could use to measure time independently of space?

replies(1): >>41898355 #
7. ndsipa_pomu ◴[] No.41895549[source]
For an observer, maybe
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8. colordrops ◴[] No.41896196{3}[source]
There is no absolute frame.
9. creata ◴[] No.41898059[source]
Some of the answers at https://physics.stackexchange.com/q/33840 explain why "everything always moves at the speed of light in a 4D spacetime" is a statement that, at best, has no content.
10. Ringz ◴[] No.41898355{3}[source]
Your point is clear. As far as can wrap my head around those theoretical concepts: An infinitely heavy object can’t move in space because there isn’t any space left to move. I would say that this object would have concentrated all mass in one point, no space left to move. No observer left to measure. I would also say that there can’t be two or more infinite masses at the same time, or they would move (at the speed of c (?) But that would have additional implications on mass and time) to the point between them.

But back to observable reality: let’s say you fall into a dark place where the time stands still and that means you are not moving, from an outside observer you are still moving relative to the space outside your black hole. Let’s say the observer fall on his way to your black hole into another black hole and experience the same phenomenon like you, from a third observers perspective everyone is moving.

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11. d1sxeyes ◴[] No.41932660{4}[source]
I am not certain that this is true:

> I would also say that there can’t be two or more infinite masses at the same time

...for the same reason that there can both be infinitely many fractional parts between 1 and 2 and at the same time, infinitely many between 2 and 3.

You raise the question on 'observable' reality, which is interesting. I would say that the example is a bit flawed (you can't 'observe' things that happen inside an event horizon'). Indeed, from an outside observer's perspective, what actually happens is that you arrive at the event horizon and 'freeze' in time and movement. Eventually, you red shift into invisibility.

I previously considered this to be a strange artifact of light, but perhaps the correct understanding is that you actually start moving at '1 second per second' through time, and stop moving through space completely?

It feels like this is the sort of thing people much cleverer than me would already be able to answer, so perhaps I'm way out of my depth here :)

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12. Ringz ◴[] No.41942802{5}[source]
> I am not certain that this is true: > I would also say that there can’t be two or more infinite masses at the same time ...for the same reason that there can both be infinitely many fractional parts between 1 and 2 and at the same time, infinitely many between 2 and 3.

Mathematically true but wouldn’t a infinite mass have infinite gravity? That means every other mass (infinite or not) would fall into that mass at the speed of light - even if they are far far away. If they are in the same space of course.

An infinite mass would mean that there is no „flat space“ left and everything is on the slippery slope to the center of that infinite mass.

That’s what I mean with my badly worded „ I would also say that there can’t be two or more infinite masses at the same time, or they would move (at the speed of c (?) But that would have additional implications on mass and time) to the point between them.“