3. Is Time absolute or relative?

In our previous posts, we had gone through Time Dilation to understand the origin of Time but let's see what Time Dilation has to say about absolute time and relative time.

Let's start with a hypothesis and two stand points to start with. Since, we already have seen that Time Dilation is all about relative time, we can not take a stand point that says 'Time is absolute and not relative'. So, what we are left with are 1. Time is absolute and relative, 2. Time is not absolute but only relative. Before we start our analysis, let's understand the absolute and relative time concepts.

Absolute time is based on the thought of Isaac Newton. Absolute time is something which runs by itself and is not affected by any external force or factors. When we say it is unaffected, it means that for an occurred event, it will NOT show different time to different observers from different frame of references. Hence it's absolute.

Relative time is subjective and it's what we observe from our perspective but the absolute one becomes visible when the two subjects come out of their own reference frames! Doesn't it sound like some psychology or philosophy stuff? Yes, that's why Einstein is a Genius. His relativity theories are so generic that we can even apply in our daily lives to gain insight to our problems. Anyway, let's stick to our topic. When observers observe a time from different frame of references, they would see different time for themselves. Hence it's called a relative to the observer or observer's frame of reference or perspective.

Now, let's proceed with the first case. Time can be both absolute and relative. Let's say an event started and ended after some time. Now to determine the duration, we have two clocks. One shows absolute time and another clock shows a relative time depends on from where we observe. How could we have two clocks showing two different times? This is possible only when the same event occurred at different spaces in different durations.

Let's take an example of running two different DVD players and one runs a movie in a normal mode and another one runs in fast forward. The time elapsed is shown, in both players, differ. Similarly, only when an event occurs in absolute space-time curvature, it shows a time and when the same event occurs in a relative space-time curvature, it will show different time to the observer as per his frame of reference.

In order for this to happen, we need to first prove that the absolute space-time curvature exists. According to Einstein's special & general theory of relativity, the time duration is based on when the observer observes the event and the observation depends how fast Light can travel and reach the observer. So, ultimately Time depends on speed of Light. For observers in different frames of references, Time is always relative since their frame of references are in relative space.

We had seen that two observers encounter a huge difference in Time after space travel due to Time Dilation. It is not because of the difference between absolute and relative space-time but the difference between the two frames of references. That's why, as soon as the two observers meet up in a single frame of reference, the clocks start to tick in a same way.

As long as an observer can never be observing from an absolute space, absolute time will remain hypothetical and as long as absolute time is hypothetical, Time can never be proven to be absolute! So here we are ending up with our second stand point - Time is not absolute but only relative!