How are time and gravity related?

Answer 1

Time and gravity are related in a way that can be difficult to describe. But gravity affects the "flow" of time, and time in a field of high gravitation moves more slowly than it does outside thatgravimetric field. Even as time dilation is a consequence of movement in an accelerated frame of reference (If you are moving relative to something else, time moves more slowly for you relative to that something else.) Gravity bends spacetime, and that alters time itself as a consequence. Without going into a windy post including free and bound energies, let's do a little "construction" project. We'll use a clear film with a grid on it, and we'll have it stretched in a square frame, but not too tight. The grid is not distorted in any way now, and this film is spacetime. If we gently place a Baseball in the middle of the film, it stretches the film and creates a "dent" or "well" in the film. The stretched area of the film around the gravity well created by the ball can be seen as the lines of the grid no longer maintaining their "even" spacing. The grid has been warped because the plastic film has. Our spacetime has been warped by the mass of the ball, and time is not the same near that ball. It moves more slowly near or in a gravity well. Added: It's important to note that subjective time is always the same. Your second and my second will seem to be the same regardless of the frame of reference in which we experience it. But when our clocks are compared, the clock at the bottom of a gravity well will be seen to have counted its intervals more slowly in comparison with an identical clock outside the gravitational field. Time is not altered, but exchanged. At the bottom of a gravity well, my time will include some of your space, and outside of the gravity well, vice versa.