Is the perceived time difference real or is it just clock malfunctioning?

how can someone become younger after taking a trip to space

doesn't make sense

@user1306322 time dilation means clocks (i.e. time) that are moving differently, or that are in different places, won't necessarily tick at the same rate

@Krazer clocks I get it, because maybe different physical variables, and so the mechanisms on which those clocks are based, may work at different speeds, but what about the actual age of material?

For the sake of this analogy lets say we have a pair of clocks ("A" and "B") here that work by magic, don't have moving parts, can't run down, or ever malfunction. In other words perfect time-counting devices that tick once every second, no exceptions, no matter what...

There's this "story" or whatever it's called about some two brothers, one of which got to a space station, lived there a while, and after returning back to Earth, looked younger than his other bro who's bever been to space

I never got how that worked

if Clock A is moving relative to Clock B, then Clock A will tick more slowly than Clock B does. How much more slowly is a function of how fast Clock A is moving relative to Clock B. It's not a linear relationship, though. At "normal" speeds -- the speeds human beings move around at -- the difference is so tiny it's really tough to measure

Does it mean you can live longer by living in space or that the time passes slower in space or what the hell

but at unimaginably high speeds, the difference is significant. If Clock A were moving at about 86% of the speed of light relative to Clock B, then Clock B would tick twice for every tick of Clock A

but how do we know that?

So if Clock A is moving relative to Clock B, Clock A ticks slower … but if Clock A is moving relative to Clock B then Clock B is also moving relative to Clock A … and that means Clock B has to tick slower! How can two clocks tick more slowly than each other?

from "looking at it"? is the time received by photons or like you instantly know via magical methods the time on both clocks with no delay

@user1306322 If you work through the math it all becomes clear, but the crux of the thing is that in order to compare how much time has elapsed on the two clocks, you have to bring them together so you can look at them both. This will involve accelerating at least one of the two clocks. If you consider Clock A to be the stationary clock and say that Clock B is rocketing past at 86% of the speed of light, in order to compare them you have to bring Clock B to rest relative to Clock A

This breaks the symmetry of the situation, and will mean that Clock A ended up measuring more elapsed time than Clock B did

and what if the clock A comes back to the clock B, do their times become the same?

again, explaining this in detail requires math, but these are the core ideas

I'm not really into explaining things with math as much as by objectively measurable aging

there's another kind of time dilation, which is gravitational. the more gravity a clock "feels," the slower it ticks. so a clock that's in the basement will tick more slowly that a clock that's on the roof. again, the difference at the altitudes humans live at is so tiny as to be really hard to measure -- not impossible; this has been tested with very precise clocks. but it's so slight you'll never notice it as you ride elevators up and down

since I'm only interested in finding out what would happen to living objects, and not some clocks

well it turns out these two effects are very closely linked. Remember how I said that you have to accelerate Clock B to bring it together with Clock A and compare them, and that that acceleration breaks symmetry? That's exactly the same effect as gravitational time dilation. see, gravitational time dilation isn't really about gravity as much as it is about not falling

if you're in a gravitational field, in order to not fall you have to accelerate upward. when you stand on a diving board, it's the upward acceleration of the board pushing against you that keeps you from falling

If the board breaks, that upward acceleration goes away, and you fall. it's the upward acceleration involved in not falling that causes gravitational time dilation, in the same way that accelerating one of two differently moving clocks to bring them together breaks symmetry and results in one clock having measured more elapsed time than the other

ok, but what about real living people?

@user1306322 here's a real world example: GPS satellites have clocks on them. These clocks send out the radio equivalent of a regular tick. your phone or whatever computes its position by listening to the ticks of multiple satellites and comparing the time between them. So time, which the regularity of a clock's ticks, is a vital part of GPS

GPS satellites are high up, in Earth orbit. that means the clocks on them tick faster than clocks at sea level. but GPS satellites are also moving pretty fast, which means the clocks on them tick more slowly than clocks at sea level. these two effects don't quite cancel out...

the faster ticking caused by altitude is a bigger effect than the slower ticking caused by relative motion, so the net result is that GPS clocks gain about 38 microseconds every day compared to stationary clocks at sea level

the differences are not as noticeable in GPS example as what I'm interested in

I'm trying to understand if it's possible to "get more time" for real people

I'm more into practical use of those physics

that's the kinda guy I am

I can't really explain how something works w/o the math behind it

I'm not really interested in mathematical explanation as much as how much use those effects would be in practise

you have to think about time as another dimension of space. you can move forward and backward, left and right, up and down, and through time. The reason that we know that time is linked to space is (other than Einstein's relativity) because we have observed it in subatomic particles

for example, if the events of the movie Apocalypse became real and the Earth only had say 10 days to live, and some cool scientists have calculated that they would need at least 1 more day to come up with a solution, could they somehow get that 1 day by, say, going to some ultra-super-high gravity corner of their science facility and come up with a solution in there, at their own speed, faster than any observer in normal conditions would perceive by 10%?

what we observed and have shown through mathematics is that the faster you move in any of the three typical directions that you would think of (front and back, side to side, and up and down), the slower you will move in time

scientitst have proven it by accelerating tiny particles to as close as they could to the speed of light, and shown that the lifetime of these particles (because they had a very short lifetime) increased dramatically, meaning that time for them was moving much slower relative to everything not traveling at that speed

I'm not sure that a life of a particle can be compared to a life of a more complex biological organism

the differ is that you can more easily accelerate one closer to the speed of light than the latter

well, as I said, I'm interested in the effects on living creatures

It's hard to explain simply because we all have relativistic views of "time" ... it's not really a thing out in space away from us, because it's an invention of mankind. we apply our theory of time to all aspects of the universe, and apply it in such a way that makes things easier for us to understand. Time is relative to each object and each object is fundamentally different

@Krazer so, according to this, while the astronaut twin is flying around in space, his brother on Earth gets to do more stuff than him

and that includes thinking and aging

with time being a measure of existence, yes

which means there's no way to "get more time" by yourself, but you'll have to put the rest of the Earth on a speed-of-light spaceship so that when they all come back, you've had some time to think about your exam, right?

er that's kind of missing the point of time dilation

why is that?

isn't the travelled distance at high speed that counts?

or does the astronaut brother never return back to Earth in that example?

kind of but not quite

@user1306322 In that way, yes. Both twins will live their 120 years happily.

But the twin who remained on earth will die first.

for observers in uniform relative motion, time dilation is symmetric: A observes B's clock to run slow; B observes A's clock to run slow

so it's only perceived?

for "twin paradox" type scenarios, the situation is not symmetric. if you travel outward from Earth at 50% of the speed of light and then return, your worldline between the two events (one event is your leaving, the other event is your returning) is a much different path through spacetime than those on Earth

I'm not sure what role light plays in all this

@user1306322 pitt.edu/~jdnorton/teaching/HPS_0410/chapters/…

I assumed that the light is the fastest way for an observer to find out what's going on with an object they're studying

so then it would be obvious (hehe) to think that looking at an object that is moving at speeds nearing the speed of light would yield unrealistic results

@Krazer according to this, in order to move fast you have to sacrifice time?

@user1306322 I wouldn't put it in those words

or is it that photons work by these rules and all other materials from which stuff is made, will live at their normal speed?

ok, so from what I understand, you can't get more time to work on something by speeding up

this gif represents time dilation due to motion

What if I was like "I wanna see tha future!", got on a fast space ship, flied a few years in space watching anime and returned back to Earth, will many more years than I've been flying have passed on Earth, or would everything be exactly as much time older as I've been flying?

by stipulation, all uniformly moving observers measure the same speed c for light and the distance light travels for the moving light-clock is longer than the distance light travels for the stationary light-clock

Time does not actually slow down. It's only that time in any way we can possibly measure it slows down

I'm not sure how that time is measured and whether I can trust these measurements

and I don't really care about clocks and such, I wanna know if it's possible for a human to effectively live faster and slower than the rest of the world

and I mean noticeably, not just in some nanoseconds

Aha, there's an answer on the meta.SO butthurt thread that suggests that we should do everything we can to force "problematic" users out of the site.

@Mysticial does the OP fall under the definition of problematic users he himself described?

Which includes, downvoting/closing their questions, and downvoting all the answers to their questions to discourage answers from feeding them.

@user1306322 No he doesn't.

@Mysticial shame, that'd be fun

but I gotta say it's hard to ask a good question by the standards of SO if you just started using the site

but then again, if the whole site is community-driven, I suppose the more knowledgeable users would have no problems editing the question to fit the standards

@user1306322 it's really a matter of perspective

Time passes faster in orbit, because satellites are farther away from the mass of the Earth... on the surface, the planet's mass drags on time and slows it down in small measures

I got that at least

any event that occurs in the universe has to involve both space and time

@user1306322 Ideally that's how it works, but there's so many bad questions that there's too many to handle.

You can't possibly try to fix all of them.

It takes 5 people to close them and 3 to delete.

if you circle a black hole long enough, the gravitational time dilation will essentially take you into the future

@Mysticial I know that a lot of questions turn out to be dupes, and there are blatantly off-topic stuff like abortions and pregnancy, which can be just deleted, but I haven't seem that many interesting questions with minor problems that couldn't be fixed, so I'm not sure what exactly is the problem

@Krazer now this is some useful application of time dilation I can get behind!

@Mysticial in the worst case, if the problem itself is worthy of a question, it can be completely rewritten by a knowledgeable user, which I remember I did a few times on SO and it didn't cause any trouble

but then I didn't take any localized questions coz of how specific they were, so if you're talking about that, I get it

Category 2 and 3 will work well together.

Category 1 (the ones with the most moderation power) are the ones who are pissed off.

"The "repwhores" who answer everything they can't" was actually better imo :p

@user1306322 soooo true

normal voting rules apply in all cases: bad q = downvote, copypasted answer = downvote and a close vote, etc.

all the rules and measures are in place

@Eric He edited this. Now it says "I need help this code"

(1) hates both (2) and (3). So they downvote/close/delete/flame. And you get this whole butthurt meta mess. aha

@LoganM I respect his comment.

> This part of the program appears to be of. – curlip 44 mins ago

@Mysticial if something pisses me off AND it's not vital for me, I just walk away for a bit of fresh air until I decide if I should come back or not

I feel like that really gets at the issue at hand.

@user1306322 That's what I do. I stopped giving a shit except for the fact that I can't find anything interesting to answer.

@Mysticial maybe join other sites, like I did

@Eric It's really representative of what the site is going to be as a whole.

@user1306322 I am. Like Anime.SE. :)

@LoganM Precisely. It's admirable.

> @curlip: Why don't you complete. – Madara Uchiha 0 secs ago

@Mysticial we need more 35mb+ gifs btw

not enough browsers have been crashing

@Krazer I can make arbitrarily large gifs if we really need them. I made one that was several GB and contained a few minutes worth of footage.

@LoganM Not enough moe.

MOAAARRRR MOEEEE

@LoganM we don't need anything per say... we just want more havoc and dorama

@MadaraUchiha I'll just make a gif that cycles through a few thousand loli images. Will be fantastic.

@LoganM I approve.

@LoganM this will need to be pinned

> dorama

I feel like such a nerd when my code contains comments such as // [name subject to change].

bot is still down :(

@Eric all my variable names are always subject to change, so I don't even bother

@user1306322 It's a reference to S;G probably

@user1306322 @LoganM is right.

as much as the creators wanted the protagonist to look "nerdy", I don't think they hit the point

he's more of an enthusiast and a dreamer

"Freeze-Ray/Phone/Microwave" is actually a pretty straightforward name

@Krazer maybe it's my ventillation, but somehow I felt like the singer is a smoker

@user1306322 Your phrase has failed to register. Reason: It made no sense.

@Krazer nvm

@MadaraUchiha No objections to the deletion; makes sense.

@senshin K.

Why don't you come here more often? :P

(It was all obviously a grand-plan to make you come here)

lol

who are these users with negative id number?

@user1306322 Bots.

@MadaraUchiha What are we deleting? ._.

@Eric The internet.

and what happened to Sakamoto?

@MadaraUchiha plz don't i like it

@Eric no pls do it

@user1306322 He's around. He brings main site questions, Hell Butterfly brings meta questions.

@MadaraUchiha I was just discussing with my friend what would happen to our lives if internet suddenly broke

he proposed we'd all be reading books, but I'm skeptical

@user1306322 Well, some 2 billion people would commit suicide on that day, for starters :D

And I'll probably be the first

@MadaraUchiha they didn't suicide! they turned into Tang®!

^^ @Madara you're a (1) I suppose?

@Mysticial (1) going towards (4)

Unless I get elected in the next run (which will be the last I'm going to attempt).

(Or at least, you know, get close to it?)

@MadaraUchiha always bound to happen to everyone in a society with large groups, but the difference is whether you leave gracefully or slamming the door

@Mysticial Also I'm in the process of making you a diagram :D

Yes!

Thank you!

> Forget the love. This site is special and unique. When the non-enthusiasts post their drivel, smack their little hands and express your disapproval; remind them that they are allowed to look and admire, but they may not handle it lest they break it.

good thing I've had enough time to ask my share of bad questions

if said rules were in effect, I'd be still reading "coding for dummies"

it's really hard to pick up from the start how to make an acceptable question

the pretty site overview doesn't help much

@MadaraUchiha Just how much Factorio do you play? lol

@Eric Finished the game a couple times, following the development. Why?

@MadaraUchiha As a result of knowing you on G+, I see your Factorio-related activity.

You know a shitton about it.

@Mysticial how's that?

@MadaraUchiha a lil bigger font and more readable

@user1306322 Can't do. I use websequencediagrams.com to generate.

@MadaraUchiha Yeah, it's a bit small.

google drive has a nice diagram tool

How about just love/hate arrows?

No descriptions.

@Mysticial rough sketch, please

How's that?

More constant font

@MadaraUchiha font is much more readable, but underlining is unnecessary

It's actually somewhat confusing.

@Mysticial That's the point :D

Oh ic how it works.

@MadaraUchiha Ah!

Read top to bottom

Feel free to edit it in when you're satisfied.

I think I can simplify it a bit more

if I can get the source~

@Krazer goo.gl/IiYIAQ

Link too long to paste here, had to use shortener, sorry :D

@Mysticial Nice!

What did he use to make this?

I dunno.

oh I'm late to the party

but hey, he called dibs first :p

Haha, nicely put.

@MadaraUchiha I don't get it

@user1306322 The heart of that diagram happens to be exactly where the help vampires are.

oh, I thought, like a steak on 4 wheels, driving and such…

"stake"

oooooh coz vampires, right!

@user1306322 You can drive steaks?

Can I get a 4x4 Cheesesteak please?

@Eric how well done?

@user1306322 Enough for the tires to grip the road well.

the best a paint can get

That's pretty awesome for a 5-minute Paint project.

it was done with a mouse on a wibbly-wobbly stand table and I have high hopes for it

@user1306322 That's a dangerous move. There was a lot at steak.

this is his hand-drawn one minute old brother from hell

he was in a steak crash and barely survived with the help of photoshop

wanna know hot to achieve that steaky feeling on the sides? ask the chef

although you could also ash the chef and use his remains in a steaky-feeling summoning ritual

@user1306322 where's the cheese?

@Krazer you know what they say, it ain't easy beeing cheesy

@Krazer Yum.

and now I must draw a bee being cheesy

Brian's voice actor contributes so much to that douchey character of his

so in essence, the solution for all users is to "deal with it" and keep enforcing the rules

@senshin about those tag wikis, that excerpt standard seems to be widely acknowledged. Why are you raising this question? Are there a number of tag excerpts you are concerned about?

@user1306322 You're right that a good number of excerpts basically follow that; I just wanted to get it on meta to make it explicit and to have something to point to so we can cut down some of the excerpts

e.g. One Piece currently has "One Piece is a shounen manga series written and illustrated by Eiichiro Oda, about the adventures of Monkey D. Luffy and his diverse crew of pirates, the Straw Hat Pirates. Luffy explores the ocean in search of the world's ultimate treasure, known as One Piece, in order to become the next Pirate King."

this definitely doesn't need to be any longer than "One Piece is a shounen manga series written and illustrated by Eiichiro Oda."

@senshin that definitely belongs in a wiki, not the excerpt

@Krazer slightly disturbing

@user1306322 you're easily perturbed

That show didn't look moe so I ignored it. Is it any good?

I'm not into sportsy stuff, so I don't know how these people feel, and I can't connect

@LoganM no cute girls -- AVOID

I don't care about the sports. I just want to know if there are any cute girls.

@Krazer Will do