According to GR, as speed increases, time slows.
I assume that speed is measured as motion across fixed space.

Therefore, since the earth is clipping along around the sun, and the sun is clipping along around the center of our galaxy, and our galaxy may be clipping along (away from everything), we can deduce that relative to a fixed point in space, the earth has a speed of X.

This means that our local passage of time (X) is due to the speed at which we are moving, which is probably a fairly large number. This speed may even be constantly fluctuating as our position and direction relative to the Sun and galaxy's center, but no-one would know because we all share the same speed, as do our instruments.

So if you speed up the rotation of our galaxy, would our "time" as a whole slow down? I don't think anyone would notice. Does this mean that other galaxies moving relatively slower would have a faster passage of time? If so, and if evolution/life is common elsewhere, then other societies may have evolved much much faster then here on earth... or if another galaxy is moving much slower, the opposite is true?

Another interesting question arises... If time is due to relative speed, then if you STOP at some fixed point in space, then time will speed up, and you will experience eternity. This being the opposite of moving at (C), where time stands still and you experience nothing. If were on earth and had a device to "lock" onto a fixed point in space, just how face would you be ripped off the face of the earth? (or through it!)

In case it is not obvious, I am looking for thoughts on speed/time correlation and the actual speed of the earth in space. For instance, if speed and time and gravity/mass have the same relationship as in Ohm's Law (as soo many theories do): V = I * R

Speed = GM / Time
Time = GM / Speed
GM = Speed * Time

GM here means Gravity/Mass, although I'm not sure which is appropriate, or if it should mean gravitional mass... seems somewhat interchangable. Under this equation, speed and time have a inverse relationship for a specific GM, and a change in GM effects both speed and time.

Other thoughts?

Hold it right there. That's according to SR, not so much GR. GR says that time also slows as you enter a gravity "field", which is really a curvature in space-time. Which throws an extra monkey wrench into your questions of what we're measuring here on Earth, being also deep into the Earth's, Sun's, and Milky Way's gravity fields.
Contrary to some early impressions I got at a young age, the only M that's affected by the relativistic gamma (that's 1/sqrt(1-v^2/c^2), used in lots of the basic relativistic equations) is the inertial mass. The apparent gravitational pull on or by the fast object seems to remain unchanged. Of course, what that "really" means in relativity is that it's curving space-time around it just as much whether it's going 0 or 0.99993 c.
Anyway, once you figure that gamma, you can figure those speed, time, and mass numbers pretty easily, but they don't share the relationship you suppose above. Observed length (along the same axis as the velocity vector) is length / gamma; observed time is time / gamma; observed mass is mass * gamma. Speed will depend on the direction of motion, since that may change both the gamma and whether it's along the axis of the velocity or not.

__________________
GhiaPet Home Page

SR/GR, my bad. ops:

It still looks like you created the "ohm's triangle" with speed (gamma) over length and time, with a little twist for mass. That would even make sense, since a longer object would have to move less in a specific time frame to bump some other object. Like a normal pool que and a two inch que... if the rears were lined up, you would have to move the small one a greater distance at a greater speed to reach the ball then the standard queue. If just length is decreased, but speed is constant, then time would increase. Maybe I'm on a bad tangent here... :-k

There would still logically be some constant (in place of my "GM") defining this inverse relationship, right?

The speed is not measured against any "fixed point". It is relative (hense, "Special Relativity"). The speed is measured against any other intertial frame of reference. This means there is no "other galaxy travelling slower" (paraphrasing) than us. Their speed is our speed, as we are just 2 frames of reference. Each galaxy might have a different relative speed as compared to a 3rd frame, but not to each other. A person in that 3rd frame of reference would indeed see time passing at different rates for each galaxy.

__________________
. . . My moustache is touching my brain!!!!

Actually, there is no such thing as fixed space in relativity. You can only measure speed relative to another object. So you could measure Earth's speed relative to the Sun, or to the galactic core, or to Andromeda, etc.

Makes sense.

Actually, relativity just depends on the speed. The position and direction don't enter into it. Other than that, you're on target.

Yup.

Exactly - our clocks would also slow down.

Relative to that arbitrary point, yes. If, say, the Milky Way is moving at .2c and Andromeda is moving at .1c, as seen from some point in neither galaxy, time is moving 3% slower in Andromeda.

I'm not so sure about this bit, partly because time dilation effects are subtle until you get to very high speeds. I suspect that there are factors that influence the rate of evolution much more heavily than relativity.

Actually, no. Remember - there is no such thing as an absolute rest frame. Going back to your fixed point, if you're at rest watching the Milky Way move towards you at .2c, then an observer in the Milky Way will observe you moving towards himself at .2c and will see himself as being at rest. As such, you can never 'stop' absolutely. On the other hand, time is always passing, regardless of whether or not you observe yourself to be moving. If, for instance, you're outside the galaxy and find yourself at rest relative to the Milky Way, both you and the galaxy will experience time passing at the same rate.

GM here means Gravity/Mass, although I'm not sure which is appropriate, or if it should mean gravitional mass... seems somewhat interchangable. Under this equation, speed and time have a inverse relationship for a specific GM, and a change in GM effects both speed and time.

Other thoughts?[/quote]

The equation is a little more complicated. It is:

t = t' / ((1 - (v/c)^2)^1/2)

The simplest way to look at it is that t' is the rate time passes for an observer at rest and t is the rate time passes for an observer moving at speed v.

Gravity (which I ignored in my above examples, BTW), makes it far, far more complicated. It's not a simple linear relationship line Ohm's Law and the equation depends, in part, on the geometry, electric charge, and rotation of whatever massive object you're taking into consideration. For a spherical, non-rotating, electrically neutral object, at rest relative to an observer, the difference in time is given by:

dT= ((1 - 2GM/rc^2)^1/2) dt

where c is the speed of light, r is the distance from the object's center of mass, M is the object's mass, G is the universal gravitational constant, dT is the amount of time the an observer experiences at r, and dt is the amount of time the observer would experience without any influence from the massive object.

Hope that helps some.

Wow. That's gunna take a minute to digest...

Thank you.