A wristwatch , fitted with very sensitive accelerometers and with an extra dial on its face. The watch would calculate the time-dilation effects caused by acceleration and the Earth's gravitational field and display the result on the extra dial, allowing you to say "Ooh, I'm now two-tenths of a picosecond younger than I would be if I'd spent my entire life motionless in zero gravity!".-- hippo, Jun 21 2005 Fun with crazy units http://dheera.net/funny/units.phpBarnyard atmosphere conversion. Oh and of course Yoctosecond. [Ling, Jun 23 2005] Planck time http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_time5.391 × 10^-44 seconds [Worldgineer, Jun 23 2005, last modified Jun 24 2005] Peter Lynds http://peterlynds.net.nz/Asserts that there is no time - or at least that's what I *think* he says. [zen_tom, Jun 23 2005] No light between events? http://www.nobeliefs.com/light.htmAh, found it. [Ling, Jun 24 2005] BBC News Story http://news.bbc.co....agazine/7759281.stmVaguely related to this idea. I like the statistic in the story though, that the clocks in GPS satellites (which provide the accurate clock signal which allows GPS systems to work) 'drift' by 40,000 nanoseconds per day because of relativistic effects (i.e. moving fast, and being in a slightly weaker gravitational field to that experienced on the surface of the Earth). [hippo, Dec 02 2008] This sort of situation could be avoided http://www.xkcd.com/514/ [hippo, Dec 10 2008] A whole heap of hot, fresh croissants to you, hippo.-- calum, Jun 21 2005 did you waste that time by thinking about it?-- po, Jun 21 2005 Would it account for the machinery in the watch bieng slowed down by said amount? Not that this would spur some recursive calculation leading to time=infinity, but it would have an enormous picosecond effect.-- daseva, Jun 21 2005 Relative to what?-- st3f, Jun 21 2005 What [st3f] said, relatively.
Incidentally, is it movement or acceleration that causes time dilation? If gravity and acceleration are the same, then might there be some time dilation experienced by people standing on the surface of a massive planet, compared to someone in geosynchronous orbit (i.e. stationary relative to your position)-- zen_tom, Jun 21 2005 [zen_tom] Special Relativity would suggest that both accelaration and gravity cause time dilation so there is a time dilation experienced by someone on a massive planet compared to a person floating in zero-g. There's no difference between the surface of a planet and geosynchronous orbit except that due to the difference in the strength of gravity caused by the increased distance from the centre of mass.-- hippo, Jun 21 2005 The thing that worries me, is when I wave my arm around, it gets younger relative to the rest of me. Just a little, but it makes me wonder—is this really my arm, or does it belong to some past me? Is it a time-traveling arm from another dimension? Can I trust it not to strangle me in the night?-- ldischler, Jun 21 2005 Special Relativity: Constant Motion (which rarely happens, hense, "special")
General Relativity: Acceleration (which is very, uhh, general)-- daseva, Jun 21 2005 Would be even cooler if it was an animated Mickey Mouse informing you of these time differences.-- Soterios, Jun 21 2005 I could have hours of fun putting this in various places on my turn table.-- zeno, Jun 22 2005 Heh...
I haven't had a girlfriend in six months, look at my time dialation, man!-- daseva, Jun 22 2005 There would need to be a tricky little compensation for the relative speed change of the hand on the dial. Depending on the direction that the hand is moving, relative to your velocity, it would have an effect on the display.
Another compensation would be required for the distance from dial to your eye, since the time taken for light to reach your eye is significant. And if the dial is viewed at an angle, a further compensation is required for the parts of the dial that are a different distance from the eye.-- Ling, Jun 23 2005 Of course, the tip of the fingers on the dial would be travelling faster than their centres, so they should age at different rates too.-- coprocephalous, Jun 23 2005 Yes, in the same way that cars which overtake you are always red because their speed relative to you redshifts them by a few yoctopantones, or whatever.-- hippo, Jun 23 2005 Light takes approx 4,000,000 Yoctoseconds to travel the diameter of an electron. Pretty slow, Eh?-- Ling, Jun 23 2005 //Light takes approx 4,000,000 Yoctoseconds to travel the diameter of an electron. Pretty slow, Eh?
Ling, Jun 23 2005 // First, catch your electron!. I would be very interested in the proof of measurement given that the electron could be anywhere!-- gnomethang, Jun 23 2005 //proof of measurement// Nobody's measured anything smaller than 100 attoseconds.
I wonder if time behaves in a quantum manner. Are yoctoseconds a theoretical limit in time length, or just the shortest amount of time anyone's bothered to talk about?-- Worldgineer, Jun 23 2005 I have no doubt that both time and space have a quantum nature. But, I was dropped alot as a baby, sooo....-- daseva, Jun 23 2005 There are 9x10^7 Planck times in one yoctosecond, and it is a fundimental minimum time length.
(see link re: Planck time)-- Worldgineer, Jun 23 2005 Max Plank got this shit on lockdown!-- daseva, Jun 23 2005 I think it's pretty weird to think that the universe is granular, as per plank lengths, times etc - There was a chap featured in WIRED the other week who'd come up with the idea that there is no time at all - it's just a thing that separates events, or something - I'll try and find a linky.-- zen_tom, Jun 23 2005 Even weirder, if there is a granular time and a granular length, when something moves along a line, does it pass through all the granular points on that line, one step at a time, or might it skip over a few, if it was going fast enough?-- zen_tom, Jun 23 2005 Some maths: If spacetime is granular, and if things must move from one speacetime 'pixel' to another without skipping over any then according to v = d/t Maximum velocity of anything must be 1 plank_length/1 plank_time_unit. Does this match the speed of light, or is it much faster/slower? Well, since Plank Length = 1.61624 × 10^-35 m Plank Time = 5.39121 × 10^-44 s Then max speed must be 1.61624 × 10^-35 m ----------------------- = 3 x 10^8m/s 5.39121 × 10^-44 s
The speed of light is: 299,792,458 m/s or in scientific notation 3 x 10^8 m/s!!
Ooops, sorry [world], I whipped out a copy of excel to do the sums.-- zen_tom, Jun 23 2005 2.9979 x 10^8 m/s. Yep, looks like the speed of light to me.
Makes sense - I believe my link says this is the definition of Planck time.-- Worldgineer, Jun 23 2005 OK, so anything going slower than the speed of light must wait at each plank point for a number of plank 'seconds' before lumbering itself off to the next point. Doesn't that strike anyone else as being a bit strange?
Makes sense why you can't exceed the speed of light though.-- zen_tom, Jun 23 2005 [zen_tom], the limit of speed as the speed of light is assumed, and then used to reach these conclusions. You're mostly working backwards here.
Though there might be something to these resting points, I'm sure many smart people have it all figured out.-- daseva, Jun 23 2005 Oh yes, [daseva], [world] I see that now - I was getting all excited!
Still, it's counter intuitive to think of say a photon 'crossing' an indivisible bit of space. If you can't get smaller than a plank _length, then a plank-sized object must occupy a plank_length, or not. It's a binary condition. If something moves, then it must hop from one plank_point, to the one immediately adjacent, after a pre-defined number of plank_seconds, according to its speed. What 'counts' down the plank_seconds before it's time to move off again? And we're not even getting into the relativistic aspects of all this...Is your own personal plank_second longer or shorter if you are travelling at the speed of light?-- zen_tom, Jun 23 2005 [das], don't trust those smart people, they'll rob you blind.
[zen] I think you are looking at things too clasically. When you get even close to that small, the concept of a particle doesn't really exist - atoms are made up of electrons, protons and neutrons, but electrons are wavelike and have no definable size, and protons and neutrons are made up of quarks and gluons, etc.-- Worldgineer, Jun 23 2005 I read one idea, once, where the author explored the possibility that light did not "travel"; it is transmitted and received. In between was nothing (and cannot be measured, unless received). He claimed that it got rid of all those difficulties like wave/particle and through the two slots or not. I suppose it would.
I'll try to find the link. (Found it: see "No light between events?")-- Ling, Jun 24 2005 Somewhere this discussion left the realm of my high school physics class- somewhere before the narrative even began. Can't we all just go into the "way-back" machine and pretend that Newtonian Physics could still hold water and thus make this confusing, albeit intriguing, series of relatively irrelevant-to-everyday-life conjectures unheard of? Or would that defeat the point?-- The Acrimonious Obfuscator, Jun 24 2005 Nice. Current technology would make this larger than a wrist watch thus making it much easier to calculate because you would be motionless as long as you wore it. +-- sartep, Jun 24 2005 So, In this spirtually induced world, my infinite mind can create an impractical watch using uneconomical sensors that measure theoretical physics anamolies and market it to people of questionable intelligence and convince them that all watches prior to were insufficent and thus worthless therefore triggering a complete overthrow of those monoplolistic "conventional" chronograph distributors thus resulting in timekeeping chaos in the world of ours in which time dosen't even exist?
I hope so!-- The Acrimonious Obfuscator, Jun 24 2005 ([UB] Thancks)-- Worldgineer, Jun 24 2005 I've always wanted to be able to say "Ooh, I'm now two-tenths of a picosecond younger than I would be if I'd spent my entire life motionless in zero gravity!" and be able to prove it. [+]-- English Bob, Jun 24 2005 Hmm. It's funny that two extremes in science today deal in teraflops and picoseconds, both periodic and equidistant from zero (+/- 10^12). Coincidence? Looking at points closer to zero, it seem that this relationship dosen't keep. However! I ask you this! Electron holes carry information in the fermi sea solely for the reason that they define a lack of something, namely, electrons. Might not the lack of information about the existance of anything thusly carry information itself? And if so, and if you consider these yoctosecond delay times between points of space, you begin to realize how much quantum brewing might be taking place, the wave functions spanning this incredibly short distance in some computational symphony before it hits the next decoherence time. Movement is merely action upon the wave function between points of decoherence.-- daseva, Jun 24 2005 A watch should be worn on each wrist, so you can make sure that both arms stay the same age.-- farble, Jun 24 2005 I'm feeling old... gotta get movin'! ...and fast!!!-- zigness, Aug 25 2005 sp. horshooses-- methinksnot, Apr 10 2006 //when I wave my arm around, it gets younger relative to the rest of me//I often wondered why women waved their arms around after applying nail varnish, and now I know - it's to keep their fingers younger-looking.sp. "accelerometers"-- coprocephalous, Dec 02 2008 random, halfbakery