The concept of time dilation is a crucial aspect of the science fiction in the movie, "Interstellar." But time dilation is an actual, measurable event in the real world. For instance, let's say we had a nuclear or atomic clock placed ten feet above the surface of the earth, and another laying upon the ground. The clock at ten feet would move faster than the one on the ground, because the gravitational pull on the ground is stronger than the gravitational pull ten feet off the ground -- gravity slows time down. The closer you are to a strong gravitational force, the slower time moves, and if that stronger gravitational force were off earth, the slower time would move there, relative to time on earth. Thus, on the fictional planet near a black hole in "Interstellar," one hour on the planet's surface is supposedly equal to seven years on earth.
Hence, time would be experienced differently in different parts of the universe, relative to earth. Your own subjective experience of time would be the same, but if we relate your experience to a "home ground" reference point such as earth, your experience and mine would differ.
Why should gravity slow time down? Gravity slows motion and time is motion. Nothing is static in the Universe. First an object is at point A, then point B, then point C. Objects appear to move over a span of time. If there was no motion in the Universe, there would be no time. If we were all frozen in time, then time itself would cease to exist.
But this is only part of the story of time. Time is peculiarly subjective. For instance, you can be in a particular mental state -- as opposed to a different spatial or physical location -- and your experience of time can be unique to you.
Athletes on the field of performance, or people in situations of dire emergency, often comment upon how time slowed down for them and they were able to perform actions which seemed extraordinary for those of us who might be observing them. Catching a pass on a football field, as a case in point. If you're in the stands watching the arc and velocity of a pass versus the pace of the receiver running, you automatically and intuitively calculate the probability of the receiver and ball meeting at some point. You may think it impossible based upon what you're seeing. However, the receiver running who experiences time slow down is able to meet the ball at the point where it descends from its arc, seemingly in defiance of physics.
That's called "flow" for the person who is experiencing it. Something indefinable in your consciousness -- something aware of your intention -- aids you in accomplishing that intention by slowing down your perceptual processes and making it possible for you to perform lightning-quick instinctive actions at a pace your consciousness might otherwise not be able to accommodate.
I experienced different versions of that when playing different sports. Sometimes I knew exactly what was going to happen at a given moment, went through my requisite motions, and the predicted result duly happened, like hitting a baseball over a fence, or making a long moving jump shot on the basketball court, or turning to throw a football in the opposite direction than I had been looking, and hitting a receiver exactly on stride thirty yards down the football field. But here I'm talking about the subjective experience of being "in the flow" rather than time itself.
I watched a video of a hunting guide in British Columbia describing himself sitting atop a huge fallen tree, tracking a wounded bear. As he swung his trailing leg over the trunk or limb that he sat upon, he also saw the bear's face -- and open jaws -- lunging up from below. As he continued to swing his back leg over the tree, he simultaneously swung his rifle from the right, pointed it down to within inches of his left foot, and pulled the trigger just as the bear's mouth was approaching his foot. He said that for him, time slowed down in that moment and allowed him to make this drastic and life-saving maneuver which seemed almost physically incomprehensible. He said that this slowing down of time had happened to him on multiple occasions, always in a life-threatening situation, and he theorized that it was an evolutionary mechanism hard-wired into human beings to allow them to survive danger. Never mind that not everyone survives!
Then there is the difference in time we experience in the dream state rather than the waking state. I'm sure you've had the experience of looking at a clock, falling asleep and having a long and detailed dream, then awakening to find that only a few minutes have passed on the clock.
There is also the possibility that we occupy different planes of existence simultaneously and have interpenetrating bodies that function exclusively in the plane to which they match in terms of vibratory energy, and our consciousness can move between those planes or fields, which all have their own peculiar states of time. In effect, they are different dimensions with laws that apply to their own environment. Hence, someone experiencing an NDE can feel that an eternity has passed while in an emergency room medical personnel have been working feverishly over someone who has flat-lined for, say, twenty minutes.
We often have no way of explaining such phenomena to ourselves, so we just discount it and deny its subjective reality. But if we occupy different spheres of existence simultaneously, with different versions of our ourselves fitted to match the respective environments, and our awareness shifts from one realm to another suddenly, besides the experience being jarring or disorienting, there may not be a point for point equation in our subjective experience of time between what passes for "reality" for us -- this three-dimensional, physical universe -- and our sense of time in this variable realm. Time is thus referred to as the "fourth dimension" by physicists. It can sometimes transcend or operate independently of our usual common three dimensions.
So, there we had two topics -- the measurable difference of the experience of time due to factors in the outer, physical universe, and the difference of the experience of time in the subjective, impossible-to-measure reality of our inner universe(s).
And yet, I still can't quite shake the feeling that time, after all, is just a dazzling illusion.
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