General relativity has been proven many times over to be correct. In my meager understanding of things, they are all premised on the fact that the speed of light is constant to all observers. I would like a greater understanding of this phenomena. All explainations i have seen thus far (laser beam bounce etc.) triumphantly show the end result and conveniently skip over the "innards". To help me understand the inner workings of light and time (gravity's another story) i have the following question.... if jack and jill are are the only objects in existance and jack accerates away his clock slows down. The only change in forces jack experiences are his own enertial changes and the effects of jills gravity. Assuming time is a measurement if atomic activity (is this a wrong assumption?), which of these two forces is slowing his clock?
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The clock isn't slowed by any force, the clock is only slow from Jill's perspective due to his immense speed. From Jack's point of reference he is not moving and Jill is speeding away from him and her clock is slow.
Misc.nerdiness
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So far the only experiments done are “near” Earth. There, objects that are in lower gravity, underwent acceleration and high speed have shown time dilation as predicted by special and general relativity. Gravity at least does seem to be a factor here but exactly how much is unclear. I am afraid we would have to go ask Jack and Jill to answer this question. Edit: Assuming that time is a measurement of atomic activity sounds very reasonable to me. But it is still very open to debate what exactly the nature of time is.
Leon Sprenger
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