Graphs of temperature, voltage, air pressure, money etc. over time also use different units for the two axes.
@FuglyDuck spacetime is an intriguing word, because time and space are entirely two different concepts...... Having different measurement units........
Is there any particular unit for measuring spacetime ?
ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org 3 days ago
FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 2 days ago
If you think about a square drawn on a paper, it’s 2 dimensional- you can measure the height and the width. But it’s still a square and it’s s on a piece of paper.
A cube is 3 dimensional- height, width and length. You can measure them and it takes up a volume of space.
But that cube is also experiencing changes, and stuff, and that is a fourth dimension we call “time”. We can measure it, too.
Our universe has 4 dimensions, not three. (It maybe has more, but that’s way beyond me. I’m sure someone here is far better able to explain spacetime than I.)
It’s not that we’re moving through space and time. We’re moving through spacetime. S Part of the reason is we can’t move through space without time because moving through space is change.
codewizard@hear-me.social 2 days ago
@FuglyDuck wait a second. A flight from India to the USA takes about 24 hours. It's basically the difference of a day. But if you look at the local clocks before boarding the flight and after alighting, there may not be any shift in time, although there's been immense change in space.
Following a similar example, it would be interesting to note the differences after one has returned back after a voyage into space.
sbeak@sopuli.xyz 2 days ago
In this case, this would be time zone shenanigans. These are decided by big governments doing governmenty things, but the universe doesn’t care about what our politicians think. Time ticks at the same rate it always does for everyone. Look at a time zone map if you have the time, it’s very interesting to see chunks being carved out for different political entities!
If you were travelling near the speed of light OR were very close to a strong gravitational field (like a black hole), time runs, to a stationary observer, much slower than on Earth. You don’t feel anything, the clock runs just as fast as it usually does. But if an astronaut coming back after such conditions would see their twin become much older. If you’re interested in this kind of stuff, check out the movie Interstellar! A lot of it revolves around exploring worlds near black holes, so you get really weird physics! Very good movie I think.