Time is a strange thing. We are used to counting clocks, but the Universe does not have some kind of main clock and dial, which means that we can experience time in different ways, depending on how we move or how gravity affects us. Physicists have tried to combine the two great theories of physics to conclude that not only is time not universally consistent, but any clocks we use to measure it blur the flow of time in the space around them.
First, it doesn't mean that your wall clock will help you age faster. We're talking about clocks in high-precision experiments, like atomic clocks. A group of physicists from the University of Vienna and the Austrian Academy of Sciences drew conclusions from quantum mechanics and general relativity to state that increasing the accuracy of a clock in the same space also increases time distortion.
Let's stop for a second and try to express in simple words what physicists know at the moment.
Quantum mechanics describes the universe extremely accurately on the smallest scale, where everything goes into the realm of subatomic particles and forces acting at the shortest distances. For all its accuracy and usefulness, quantum mechanics allows us to make predictions that contradict our everyday experience.
One such prediction is the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, which states that when you know one parameter with high accuracy, the measurement of the second parameter becomes less accurate. For example, the more you refine the position of an object in time and space, the less you can be sure of its momentum.
And it's not that someone is smarter or that someone has better equipment - the Universe basically works like that, it's fundamental. Electrons do not bump into protons due to the balance of "uncertainty" of position and momentum.
Another way of looking at it is that to determine the position of an object with the utmost precision, we need to reckon with an unimaginable amount of energy. When applied to our hypothetical clock, dividing the second into fractions in our clock means that we know less and less about the energy of the clock. And this is where general relativity comes in - another proven theory in physics, only it uses time more to explain how massive objects affect each other at a distance.
Thanks to Einstein's work, we understand that there is an equivalence between mass and energy, expressed by the formula E = mc2. Energy is equal to mass times the square of the speed of light. We also know that time and space are connected, and this space-time is not just an empty box - mass, and therefore energy, can bend space-time.
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This is why we see interesting effects like gravitational lensing, when massive objects like stars and black holes distort the path of light with their mass. And it also means that mass can lead to gravitational time dilation, when time flows the closer, the closer to the source of gravity.
Unfortunately, while these theories are well supported by experiments, they hardly get along well. Therefore, physicists are trying to create a new theory that would fit both of these theories and would be correct. In doing so, we continue to explore how these theories describe the same phenomena like time. As, in fact, in this article.
Physicists have hypothesized that the act of measuring time with high accuracy requires an increasing expenditure of energy, which automatically reduces the accuracy of measurements in the immediate area of any time tracking device.
“Our findings suggest that we need to rethink our ideas about the nature of time when both general relativity and quantum mechanics are taken into account,” says researcher Esteban Castro.
What impact does this have on us on a daily basis? As is often the case with theoretical physics, especially none.
While quantum mechanics technically applies to "big" things, don't worry if your stopwatch is ticking by a fraction of a second; a black hole will not open on your wrist. All of the above conclusions will only be relevant to watches in highly accurate experiments, much more advanced than those currently being developed.
But the better we understand how clocks and time in particular work, at least in theory, the better we understand the universe around us. One day, perhaps, we will understand the nature of time itself. The work of the scientists was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
ILYA KHEL