![]() This is why, when the crew returns to Earth, Matthew McConaughey’s daughter is an old woman while he appears to be the same age as when he left. Because of the black hole’s intense gravitational influence, time slows dramatically for the crew on the planet, making one hour on the surface equal to seven years on Earth. ![]() Running 38 microseconds fast would result in a positioning error of nearly 10 kilometres, an error that would increase daily if the time difference were not constantly corrected.Ī more dramatic example of time dilation can be seen in the movie Interstellar when Matthew McConaughey and his crew land on a planet with an extreme gravitational field caused by a nearby black hole. ![]() While this time gain seems insignificant, GPS satellites rely on their onboard clocks to maintain precise global positioning. These satellites have highly precise clocks onboard that gain an average of 38 microseconds per day due to time dilation. This effect can be seen in GPS satellites, which orbit 20,200 kilometres above the Earth’s surface. According to Einstein’s theory, because time moves more slowly as you move faster through space, the closer an object is to the centre of the Earth, the slower time moves for that object. The centre of the Earth’s gravitational dip is located at the Earth’s core, where gravitational acceleration is strongest. The closer an object gets to the centre of the dip, the faster it accelerates. The Earth creates a gravitational dip in the fabric of spacetime which is deepest at its core. Instead of treating space as a flat and rigid place that holds all the objects in the universe, Einstein thought of it as curved and malleable, able to form gravitational dips around masses that pull other objects in, just as a bowling ball placed in the centre of a trampoline would cause any smaller object placed on the trampoline to slide towards the centre.Ī computer-generated representation of Einstein’s curved spacetime. He coined the phrase “spacetime,” fusing the three dimensions of space and one dimension of time into a single term. Einstein was the first to realize that time is not constant, as previously believed, but instead slows down as you move faster through space.Īs part of his theory, Einstein re-envisioned space itself. Real-life time travel occurs through time dilation, a property of Einstein’s special relativity. And you don’t need a wormhole or a DeLorean to do it. While the debate continues over whether travelling into the past is possible, physicists have determined that travelling to the future most certainly is. The ability to travel through time, whether it is to fix a mistake in the past or gain insight into the future, has long been embraced by science fiction and debated by theoretical physicists. Chenoa van den Boogaard, Physics and Astronomy editor
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