Albert Einstein has profoundly shown that the laws of physics work equally well in all moving and "stationary" frames of reference. This accounts for the time dilation displayed between two frames which move at speeds relative to one another.

Since time is a measure of aging(decay), and we know that different frames age according to their velocity relative to another frame, I wonder how exact we are able to measure the age of actual material which comes from space and lands upon the earth.

Let us suppose that there are two humans, both of whom possess a clock which have been calibrated exactly together in a single frame(say earth), so that those clocks read exactly the same time. Then, one of those humans takes off on a spaceship traveling at near light speed away from earth. Let us also suppose that both people have a helmet on and that these helmets have an extension arm which holds a live camera. This would allow either one of the humans to observe the other at any given time. To the human on the ship, time passes normally to him/her, and the same holds true for the human who stays on earth. Both of their clocks hold an accurate and consistent measure of time in that frame of reference.

According to Einstein's relativity theory, when viewing the other, both would witness the other aging slower than themselves as a result of the rule of indistinguishibility. In other words, neither one would be able to make a distinction between which frame was moving at near light speed away from the other if the only measure of visual input was the camera. This is a result of the fact that neither one could effectively state which frame was moving and which was stationary. Both frames would be moving at near light speed relative to the other frame. This paradox has been solved by also supposing that the spaceship originated and returned in the same frame(earth).

But what about space matter that does not originate on earth? Is the velocity of that space matter taken into account when determining it's age? Would we not have to know at what speed the material had been traveling at throughout it's "life" in order to be able to determine it's true age since that velocity directly affects how old we think it is?

If an error were to come from a miscalculation, I would think that it would cause an underestimation of age, would it not? If we carbon dated an object which originated in the cosmos somewhere using our time scale, it would not take into account the amount of time that the object had been traveling through space and at precisely what speed this had been done at. Because those two factors directly affect the rate of the decay of material, would'nt we have to know their value in order to effectively determine their age?

Just wondering, and as usual, I am probably missing some fundamental principle of physics here.

He was wrong. We should not see the outer edge of the sombrero galaxy where it belongs, but bent above the black hole, but we do see it unmolested.

Give old man a rest. He was no different than those who "discovered" that the earth is sitting on three elephants.

Gibberish.


Creative. I want to answer what I think your question is but first let me distinguish some things first.

Does the camera record time outside of each given frame of reference and each camera is not subject to the velocity of each frame?

Basically is the camera effected by the distortion of time due to high velocity in this scenario?

The problem here is that in order for the camera to work the way it must for each person to "see" the other in "real time" would break the laws of physics.

The transmission of the signal between the cameras would have to travel faster then the speed of light to keep the two linked up in any way that would allow them to see the aging of the other outside of this seemingly paradoxical effect.

This very idea of the cameras causes additional confusion, due to the need to suspend the laws of physics to use it as a reference. There are no universal frames of reference. (so says the standard model)

Ok, now on to your question.



Is this space matter stuck to the hull of the ship traveling at near light speed? What is this space matters relative velocity to each of the other observers?

That answer will allow you to answer your question.

Yes, if we where to use a third reference frame, we would need to treat it the same as the other calculations.

I was going to explain how we calculate this, but after reading your question several times I think its more important to say that all time when averaged together is flat, which is to say that the relative nature of all matter flying around the universe to determine a "universal" time is averaged together and that average is a single time. Which from our perspective on earth is 13-15 billions years of existence.

WMAP has done just such an average, only instead of the velocity of matter it averaged the heat energy left over from the big bang. (Much easier calculation)

Time, space, movement All of this must be taken into account to have any kind of universal time. Which many physicists do not accept as being real. It is certainly impossible for us to make such a calculation.


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I do want to say from a quick edit: Everything we currently observe indicates very nearly flat space.

Billy,

Thank you for the response. I understand that the spaceship paradox has it's logical difficulties, and therefore is usually dismissed as such. It was only meant to lay a little groundwork for the question at hand. One which involves our ability or inability to concisely determine the age of space matter, such as asteroids/meteorites.

Your question to me concerned the relative speed of such matter.

My question to you(science) is how could we possibly know what the relative speed was throughout the material's existence if we only found the matter on earth afterwards. For to know the answer to that question is a necessary element to calculate it's age, is it not?

We cannot. Not through the use of relativity. We could only use radio dating to provide such knowledge of a rocks age. (to my knowledge)

Relativity is snapshots of reality. We can know the difference of time from two relative velocities, not the absolute time in relation to some ultimate frame of reference that does not exist as far as classical physics is concerned.

From the purpose of a relativity calculation time starts when the physicists starts recording velocity and time.

When time is 1 on the function that is the beginning. If we could map everything that has ever happened to every particle since the big bang . . . lol. What a monstrous calculation hehe.

Then of course there is that pesky problem of when the universe was smaller then the Planck scale, that tends to make nonsense of relativity calculations.

that's why i like to always go as fast as i can!

That was an easy out. Your teacher told you so, right?

would this mean that if i were going down the road at 60mph that i would age faster than someone doing 45....maybe thats why OLD people drive so DAMN slow.. ..well at least that mystery is solved...

As far as I can see it, the dating of any old space matter, like rocks and the like, so material things, there isn't a good way to date it. On the earth ordinarily, there is no good way to date rocks, besides erosion tendencies or other geological happenings. But these types of dating do not have to do with the material, as is, but more so with the rates of processes, like the wear and tear of a site or certain stratification. Just looking at a rock won't tell you enough about how old it is, at least with current understanding. I would imagine that the way we know the age of light matter, like particles coming from a star, the initial conditions are known, like stars so massive or energetic produce light with such a frequency, and then as it travels through space, the frequency decreases. In the same way, light can get 'older' when it escapes from a gravity field and experiences redshift. But to deal with matter exclusively, that is right now a different question. There would have to be new methods of knowing a materials age.

But the question seems to concern all enties, and be a logical question dealing with unequal time passages/rates. So can one thing have two ages, and if so, which is right? It is clear that both must be, if anything proposed is to make sense. I was thinking this question with light the other day. Say that a large source gives out rays from behind a big gravitational source. It is such that one beam goes very close to the gravity well, and the next a little further out. Both hitting an observer after ther travels, one would have less energy, and the other slightly more, which seems odd if they came from uniform source. What is the difference to be attributed to, except to the mass of the middle body? Still, one could say that one ray was older, and the other more recently emitted, if it wasn't known that the source was the same. Perhaps this can shed some light on the space rocks question, when thinking in terms of energy and what would be 'different' between two observers when witnessing the 'same' rock, given that the have some reason to disagree.

Knowing that both must view the rock equivalently to some logical scheme, the differences according to a reference frame on the rock, the other two people have different motions, and times on their clocks, or rates of ticking, that is, some discrepencies that allow us to say that one is in relativistic motion. And about the only way I see out of this is to say the 'rate of aging' of rock is the same thing as it's respective energy, and that that changes from either's point of view.

I think the main problem here is that special relativity there is equivalency of uniform refference systems, but not of a whole, like for accelerating ones. General goes a little further, saying that gravity is mathematically equivalent motion wise to acc. and that this leads to solutions when gravity or acc. problems are given. So they both have their limitations. Sr is to uiniform motion, and gr to nice gravity. The main problem is that they don't apply to the whole universe at once. That's where I see the crux of the question, that one expects there to be one age for a given body, when relativity is telling us that there are two that are equivalent and both good for describing terms like age or rates. One would have to view the whole universe, and no theory does this right now. Such paradoxes don't discredit previous theories in anyway, they just tell us that there must be some solution which does away with such problems.

It was a good question, and I'm really not sure that I anwsered it satisfactory. However, I think that thee has to be some anwser to find out!

No, it's actually the exact opposite. That's Why they are old...