Heres a good one for people with too much time on their hands and T3 connections on their computers.
Is there a unit of measure for the energy imbued onto matter by the passage of time? Because all motion is measured by watching the clock, then what is the temporal benchmark?
It is theorized that as you near a black hole, time becomes compressed and slows down from your perspective (see old Cosmos episodes). Therefore, if you spent, say twenty minutes in a close orbit of a BH, many thousands of years would have passed here at home.
So my question is, if time can be compressed it can also be decompressed and what is the unit of measure that describes these conditions?
This sort of thing is way beyond me in practical terms but it seems to me you are asking for is the Special Theory of Relativity. More specifically you want to do Lorentz Transformations (I think):
Remember that not only does the measurement of time change as you go faster but so does your mass (it increases) and length decreases (your ruler will get shorter).
I’ve never been good at resolving units but maybe you can figure it out from here.
Actually from your perspective nothing changes. Everything will seem fine right up till you get squished (or stretched like a piece of spaghetti and then squished is more likely).
You will, however, look like you’re going slower in time to someone outside of the effects of the black hole watching you go in.
OK, let’s say I toss a clock into a black hole. From the point of view of the clock, I tossed it at just the right time such that it’ll cross the event horizon (the point of no return) at exactly 12:00 Midnight. If I stay outside the black hole and watch the dial, the clock will seem to get slower and slower, to the point that I will never see it quite reach 12:00. This is the extreme case of time dilation.
Now, as to your original question of how we measure it: We don’t need any units at all. You could say that we measure the rate of the clock in seconds per second, but one second per second is the exact same thing as one year per year, or one jiffy per jiffy, or one fortnight per fortnight, or any other time units you care to use. We just say that it’s going at half the speed, or a tenth the speed, or whatever. The bechmark is the passage of time according to a clock which is in the same frame of reference as the observer. You’d think that this would cause all sorts of inconsistencies, depending on who’s doing the observing, but it turns out to all work out in the end.
Also, it should be noted that none of this has anything particularly to do with energy, which is measured in completely different units.
We live in a gravity well, so our perception of the passage of time is slower than the Time Standard. Say you are someplace that has nearly 0 gravitational influences, like between the galaxies, under minimal gravitation then you would have the Time Standard of T1/1. One second equals one second.
Now, how do you determine what our Time Speed is under the influence of 1G. Would an observer in a T1/1 area who is watching a clock in a 1G environment notice that his clock is moving faster than the clock in the gravity well. And if so, by how much? T5/1? T10/1?
What about the same observer watching a clock that is nearing the event horizon of a BH. T1000000000/1?
Einstien did some experiments using stop watches and the Empire State Bldg to show that the further into a gravity well you are, the slower you experience time.
What my question is, if the Time Standard is T1/1, what are we experiencing?
And as an after thought. If Time and Gravity are tied together, can you have one without the other? (Within the boundries of the universe of course).
Perhaps you should concentrate on some of the more basic (mundane?) aspects of physics before tackling something like this. Your question indicates that you aren’t too clear on the concepts of time and energy. I don’t want to discourage you from thinking about or questioning these things, but you’re really just speculating, and it isn’t going to get you anywhere.
OK, I don’t have time right now to do the calculations, but the Earth has an extraordinarily weak gravitational field, when you compare it to, say, a black hole. We’re not talking 5 to 1 or 10 to 1 here, it’s more like 1.000001 to 1. To get a rough idea of it, take the Earth’s escape speed, divide that by c (the speed of light), and add it to 1.