Tuesday, August 1, 2023

How Velocity Slows Down Time and Our Aging

This morning on 1 August 2023 I received this message from a former medical colleague of mine through WhatsApp. It reads:

 

“Very Special Day in Life 2023”

Everyone's age today is 2023.

Did you know that today the whole world is the same age! Today is a very special day and only happens once every thousand (1,000) years.

Your age + your year of birth, every person = 2023.

It’s so strange that even experts can’t explain it! You check it out and see if it is 2023. It has been waiting for a thousand years!

Example:

I am 69 years old.

I was born in 1954.

So, 69 + 1954 = 2023

Use your age during this year. I was born in 1993, and I am 30 years old.

1993 + 30 = 2023

 Very interesting. Please try it.”

 

In reply, I wrote back to tell him it does not matter when we were born, or what age or year we are in, we all age at the same rate, and we shall always be in the same year living together so long as we do not die and our souls fly away near the speed of light, at or faster than the speed of light. 


If our souls that has no mass flies at the speed or faster than the speed of light, then each year may not be the same for each soul even if we die together at the same time. It will depend on the speed our soul flies off from our bodies. Some souls may linger for a while as wandering ghosts, some may travel faster or slower through a time tunnel to arrive in another world. 

Some ghosts that have been seen by people were reported to look very ancient as if time stood still for them ever since they left their body centuries ago and they have not aged further. They remained in their ancient-looking dresses of their time. 

Since one of my interests is on astronomy (besides my interest and training in medicine, nutrition, analytical food chemistry and other biological and physical sciences), allow me then on my interest in astronomy and in astrophysics  to explain this mathematical phenomenon even for a physical body like us while we are here on this Earth.

The Earth whirls round and round on its axis at a speed of around 460 m / s, or 1,600 km per hour (about 1,000 miles per hour), and at the same time it revolves around the Sun at a rate of 107,000 km per hour (or nearly 30 km/s).

Part of my postdoctoral study on astronomy at Oxford ending on 25 November, 2019 concerns some of the effects of Einstein's special relativity, in that time moves relative to the observer. An object in motion experiences time dilation, meaning that when an object is moving very fast it experiences time moving more slowly than when an object is at rest. 

 

For instance, an astronaut who spent nearly a year aboard the International Space Station (ISS) moves much faster than someone of the same age moves when he spends the same one year on earth.

 

But owing to time dilation, an astronaut on the ISS is a tiny bit younger as time slows down a teeny-tiny bit for him, compared to someone of the same age who was earth-bound. 


But should an astronaut start to accelerate faster and faster or decide to fly off to another world at a much, much faster speed than merely whirling round and round over the Earth at the same rate, then time will slow down slower and slower for him as he travels faster and faster to another world.

 

But of course, one can argue that an astronaut will age faster compared to an earth-bound person due to stress and radiation up there in space. But that’s a biological factor not a physical one due to time dilation. However, normal speeds hardly have any effect on time-slowing. But at speeds approaching the speed of light, the effects of time dilation would become very apparent and perceptible.

 

Let me give myself as an example. Let us say I manage to travel very close to the speed of light towards the nearest star Proxima Centauri.

This  is a small, low-mass star located 4.2465 light-years away from Earth. Not satisfied with the nearest star, perhaps I may try to reach a further star such as Wolf 359, a red dwarf star located in the constellation Leo, near the ecliptic. It lies at approximately 7.9 light years from Earth. Having reached it  I shall try to travel further away to Procyon the brightest star in the constellation of Canis Minor, the eighth-brightest star in the night sky, with an apparent visual magnitude of 0.34.  It lies at a distance of just 11.46 light-years and is one of Earth's nearest stellar neighbours. Perhaps we can try even further to reach the star Ross 47, a variable star of spectral type M4 located in the constellation Orion, 19 light-years from Earth.

However, after many years of interstellar travels at speeds very close to that of light, I began to realize even to the nearest stars are just too far and troublesome to reach. So instead of travelling further, perhaps I decided to head back home after 10 years of travel.  


But on returning home I find that more than two centuries have  already gone by on Earth although I have aged only by 10 years.

 

Of course, we do not have that technology at this point in time to travel anything even less than 5 % the speed of light which is 14,986,623 m (14,987 km) per second. But if we do, the effects of time slowing down becomes apparent.

 

On board the International Space Station they have a GPS device to determine their position based on communication with at least three satellites in distant Earth orbits. Those satellites have to keep track of incredibly precise time in order to pinpoint a location on Earth. They use atomic clocks for time precision. The atomic clocks on board the International Space Station ISS are constantly whizzing through space at 14,000 km/h. Based on special relativity this implies they tick an extra 7 microseconds, or 7 millionths of a second, each day, according to an American Physical Society publication.

 

In order to maintain pace with Earth clocks, atomic clocks on GPS satellites need to subtract 7 microseconds each day. Through additional effects of gravity from general relativity as a follow-up of Einstein's special relativity, clocks closer to the center of a large gravitational mass like Earth tick more slowly than those farther away. This effect adds microseconds to each day on a GPS atomic clock, so in the end 7 microseconds is needed to be subtracted from the atomic clocks every day. GPS clocks don't tick over to the next day until they have run a total of 38 microseconds longer than comparable clocks on Earth.

 

The slowing down of time due to time dilation is shown by the Lorentz factor.  This is a quantity expressing how much the measurements of time, length, and other physical properties change for an object while that object is moving. The expression appears in several equations in Einstein’s special relativity, and it arises in derivations of the Lorentz transformations. 

The name originates from its earlier appearance in Lorentzian electrodynamics. It was named after the Dutch physicist Hendrik Lorentz. It is generally denoted γ for gamma.

 

The Lorentz factor (γ) is given by    




         


Where v = velocity of an object

c = speed of light in a vacuum at 299 792 458 m / s

 Let us give some examples of time dialtion due to increasing speeds from this table. 

Speed in units of c            Lorentz factor γ                 Reciprocal, 1/γ 

0                                             1                                             1

0.050                                    1.001                                    0.999

0.100                                    1.005                                    0.995

0.150                                    1.011                                    0.989

0.200                                    1.021                                    0.980

0.250                                    1.033                                    0.968

0.300                                    1.048                                    0.954

0.400                                    1.091                                    0.917

0.500                                    1.155                                    0.866

0.600                                    1.25                                       0.8

0.700                                    1.400                                    0.714

0.750                                    1.512                                    0.661

0.800                                    1.667                                    0.6

0.866                                    2                                             0.5

0.900                                    2.294                                    0.436

0.990                                    7.089                                    0.141

0.999                                    22.366                                 0.045

0.99995                               100.00                                 0.010

 

We can see how speed can dilate time due to the Lorentz factor. If we goes faster and faster, and if it was possible for us to travel at the speed of light, time stands still, and there is no passage of time.

 

Can we now argue what if a person dies? Will time stand still for his soul. Will our souls remain eternal without aging? Remember our souls are not made of physical matter. Neither has it any mass. Without mass it should be capable of travelling at the speed of light to anywhere in the ever-expanding Universe. Time stands still for them when they become eternal beings? Does that sound logical?  They will remain eternally young or old at the same age as when they left their bodies on Earth.

 

Alternatively, they may remain ancient-looking like they were in the past. As I have already said there were many reports and stories from people who saw ghosts as wandering souls dressed in ancient clothing like they came from another dimension in the past.

Time may have stood still for them having travelled through a space-time dimension at the speed of light or even faster than the speed of light to come home to haunt this world again. 

 

This seems logical to me to explian events I never even thought of previouly till my former colleague sent me this message:

 

“Very Special Day in Life 2023”

 

For this I like to thank my former medical collegue for setting me thinking critically to enable me to write this article.


What is your take on this? 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

1 comment:

Kelly Keys said...

Dear Dr Lim

Thank you for your very enligtening, thought-provoking, mind-blowing article so well explained. I was wondering if this could also be the reason why angels and heavenly beings are eternal as if time stands still for them. If they are without mass they could fly here and there appearing perhaps from world to world at the speed of light while we are stuck here to age with time.

Just a thought

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