Tuesday 27 November 2018

general relativity - Does time expand with space? (or contract)


Einstein's big revelation was that time and space are inseparable components of the same fabric. Physical observation tells us that distant galaxies are moving away from us at an accelerated rate, and because of the difficulty (impossibility?) of defining a coordinate system where things have well defined coordinates while also moving away from each other without changing the metric on the space, we interpret this to mean that space itself is expanding.



Because space and time are so directly intertwined is it possible that time too is expanding? Or perhaps it could be contracting?



Answer



The simple answer is that no, time is not expanding or contracting.


The complicated answer is that when we're describing the universe we start with the assumption that time isn't expanding or contracting. That is, we choose our coordinate system to make the time dimension non-changing.


You don't say whether you're at school or college or whatever, but I'm guessing you've heard of Pythagoras' theorem for calculating the distance, $s$, between two points $(0, 0, 0)$ and $(x, y, z)$:


$$ s^2 = x^2 + y^2 + z^2 $$


Well in special relativity we have to include time in the equation to get a spacetime distance:


$$ ds^2 = -dt^2 + dx^2 + dy^2 + dz^2 $$


and in general relativity the equation becomes even more complicated because we have to multiply the $dt^2$, $dx^2$, etc by factors determined by a quantity called the metric, and usually denoted by $g$:


$$ ds^2 = g_{00}dt^2 + g_{11}dx^2 + g_{22}dy^2 + ... etc $$



where the $... etc$ can include cross terms like $g_{01}dtdx$, so it can all get very hairy. To be able to do the calculations we normally look for ways to simplify the expression, and in the particular case of the expanding universe we assume that the equation has the form:


$$ ds^2 = -dt^2 + a(t)^2 d\Sigma^2 $$


where the $d\Sigma$ includes all the spatial terms. The function $a(t)$ is a scale factor i.e. it scales up or down the contribution from the $dx$, $dy$ and $dz$, and it's a function of time so the scale factor changes with time. And this is where we get the expanding universe. It's because when you solve the Einstein equations for a homogenous isotropic universe you can calculate $a(t)$ and you find it increases with time, and that's what we mean by the expansion.


However the $dt$ term is not scaled, so time is not expanding (or contracting).


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