Tag Archives: tick of the clock

SR #23: Light Clocks

sr23-0This week I’ve focused on the relativity of time under motion, and we’ve seen that moving very fast allows “time travel” into the future. Very handy if you don’t mind the one-way trip. What’s more, a spaceship capable of such a flight is physically possible, so it’s a “time machine” we know works!

On Monday I described how fast-moving, but short-lived, muons created high in the atmosphere live long enough to reach the ground due to time dilation. That’s just one place we see Special Relativity actually working exactly as Einstein described. For another, fast-moving particles at CERN have decay times showing they, too, have slow clocks.

As we’ll see today, light’s behavior requires time appear to run slower!

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Death Watch

blackDeath Watch. A vigil over a dying person. Waiting. Not knowing which tick of the clock brings change. Tick. This one? Tock. This one?

There are other watches. Surgery watch. That one often brings good news. One can be hopeful. The doctor approaches with a smile; tension releases in a flood of relief.

The only relief here is that someone else, someone you love, is finally free from pain. For the rest there is only loss.

The other side of a life. Birth watch. The watch that brings joy. And cigars and balloons.

Birth. Tick. Death. Tock.

Grains of sand passing through the hourglass of life. Each of us having that brief quick ride through the throat of reality.

And having gone from there to there, at last, coming to rest.