Page 68 - Eternity Has Already Begun

ETERNITY HAS ALREADY BEGUN

the person who put you in there says that you spent only two days
in there; that the sun you saw from the window was falsely pro-
duced; and that the clock in the room was especially regulated to

move faster, then your calculation would be erroneous.
This example dramatizes that the information we have about the
rate of time's passing is based only on references that change ac-
cording to the perceiver.
In the same way, the way that the speed of the passage of time is
perceived differently be everyone depending on the circumstances
proves that time consists of a psychological perception. For exam-
ple, a 10-minute delay while waiting to meet a friend may seem a
very long time to you. Or an extra 10 minutes sleep may seem very
long to someone waking to go to school or work after a sleepless
night, and he may actually imagine he has had a full night's sleep
because of it. Under some circumstances, the opposite may apply.
As you will remember from your student days, a 10-minute break
after a lesson lasting 40 minutes, or seeming to last a century, may
go by very quickly.
That relativity of time is a scientific fact, also proven by scientif-
ic methodology. Einstein's Theory of General Relativity shows
that the speed of time changes depending on the speed of the object
and its distance from the center of gravity. As speed increases, time
is shortened—compressed—and slows down until it approaches to
the point of stopping entirely.
Einstein himself gave an example. Imagine two twins, one of whom
remains on Earth while the other goes into space at a speed close to the
speed of light. On his return, the traveler will find that his brother has
grown much older than he has. The reason is that time flows much
more slowly for the person who travels at near-light speed. The same
example may be used for a father travelling into space on a rocket at
99% of the speed of light, and his son who remains on Earth.

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