Despite the article we read last week, my questions regarding if time exists, or not, were still unclear. I am a person who likes factual evidence to back up any claims, so the articles we read this week really transformed my previous conclusions. I understood relativity of simultaneity as basically it depending on you perspective to help determine time. For example, they mentioned how when you're standing at the midpoint of a surface, the flashes occurred at the same time, but that was only in your perspective. To a person who is in motion would say the opposite, that one came before the other. So my take on all of this initially, was that it is hard to comprehend two events happening at the same time, but also them not occurring simultaneously. After I finally started to grasp how that was possible my conclusion regarding time is that it does in fact exists, despite other things I have read from McTaggart. I believe that the Einstein article's were showing that we'll each see different "events" depending on our frame of reference.
What simultaneity is not, is referring to it based on appearances, meaning that you would need to actually take that into affect when coming to your conclusion. The article used the example of a person seeing a lightning strike and then hearing thunder, their conclusion was that it happened at the same time. Although the observe who was of greater distance away from where the strike happened, claimed one happened before the other. This example I am still a bit confused on, so I am interested to see how you interpreted that. Nonetheless, I believe that time does in-fact exists, although it will be different for-everyone depending on you frame of reference.
-Lauryn
I agree with your understanding of relativity of simultaneity. I also understood it as your perspective and how we perceive events that happen. I also believe time exists because a certain is event at one point is past, present, future. The article we read last week has also given me a different perspective of time and it is kind of a cycle now thinking about it, but I think time is real.
ReplyDeleteHey Lauryn! I completely agree with how you said it was hard for you to grasp a concept that doesn't really have evidence to support it. I think I am the same way as well. I think with the lightning, thunder example the author was just trying to show how in some instances to one observer they may occur simultaneously but to someone distanced from the scene one may occur before another, once again showing how simultaneity is relative to the observer's frame of reference. I'm interested to know whether your opinion and perspective on time has changed ever since learning about this theory of relativity of spontaneity.
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