Week 5: Time
Introduction
In Week 4 you looked at the limits of space, and whether the universe could be infinite. This week, you will look more closely at what’s meant by ‘time’ and how it’s connected to space. Then you‘ll look more deeply (very deeply, in fact!) into one place where it all changes, and we can already outline what we cannot know.
Here’s Marcus to introduce this week’s topic.
Download this video clip.Video player: Video 1
Transcript: Video 1 Introduction
MARCUS DU SAUTOY
Let’s turn to the challenge of understanding time. In the past, we thought that time ticked at the same rate wherever you were in the universe. But Einstein’s great breakthroughs revealed that time is much more fluid. Clocks beat at different rates according to how we are moving relative to each other. Gravity affects the ticking of a clock. Indeed, you’ll find out what happens to a clock as it approaches the extreme gravity of a black hole.
Video 1 Introduction
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By the end of this week, you should be able to:
- appreciate that the passage of time is related to how quickly one is moving
- understand the implications of Einstein’s theory of general relativity on gravity, space and the flow of time
- outline some of our current knowledge of black holes, their structure, and what happens inside them
- describe how general relativity clashes with quantum mechanics at the centre of a black hole, and what this means.