View Single Post
  #2  
Old 23-05-2005, 07:25 PM
[1ponders]'s Avatar
[1ponders] (Paul)
Retired, damn no pension

[1ponders] is offline
 
Join Date: Nov 2004
Location: Obi Obi, Qld
Posts: 18,778
Robby, it doesn't matter which direction you are going, away or towards someone. Its your relative speed that's important. For someone at rest (relative) viewing someone travelling, the traveller time will appear to be slowing, regardless of direction. It has little to do with the speed persay, but more to do with the increase in mass and therefore local gravity field and its effects on space time. The faster you go the heavier you weigh the more effect you have on spacetime through gravitational distortion, sort of. It can be seen in the effect of gravity round a black hole. If you viewed someone falling into a black hole, they would appear to slow down and it would take foreever to cross the event horizon. For the person falling the crossing would seem normal. There have been experiments done with very accurate clocks, one on earth and one in space the the one on earth ran slower due to the greater influence of gravity.

If anyone is seriously interested in this stuff then I can highly recommend a book called "The New Physics" a collection of works by leading modern astrophysicists and mathematians like Steven Hawkings on quantum gravity, black holes, big bang, nature of the universe... yadda yadda, and all sorts of aesoteric "stuff". If you can ignore most of the maths (I did) its an interesting read.
Reply With Quote