in the movie “Interstellar” time goes by much faster for the main character on the ship than it does for the people back on Earth. How does this happen?
In: Physics
Thier first time skip is rather mundane.. they are asleep in cryogenic suspension for the first leg of the trip.
Then in the other side of the wormhole, they go to a planet in orbit near a black hole. It’s the gravity warp of the black hole that leads to the apparent difference in reference time between each group of characters.
Everyone knows the 3 coordinates (x,y and z) which we often call width, height and depth when measuring objects. The 4th dimension is time, which is connected to space, hence space-time. We are constantly moving through space and time at the speed of light (speed of causality if we’re more accurate). Think of a ramp, if you are going up the ramp, you are moving through 2 dimensions because you are moving up as well as laterally. Now imagine two people are going to run a race. Both people will run at the exact same speed, but one person has to run 100 meters while the other person has to run 100 meters while also moving up the ramp. Who would win? The answer is the person who is running on the flat ground. Even though they’re running the same speed, the person running the race on the ramp is losing some of their lateral velocity and putting it towards climbing the ramp (vertical velocity). The same is true with time. Everyone is moving through space-time at the same speed, but that doesn’t mean we’re all moving the same speed in every dimension. If two people are standing perfectly still (not moving through space) then all of their motion is through time. When we begin to move, some of our movement is transferred away from time and instead put to moving through space. The faster we move thru space, the slower we move thru time. At everyday speeds, we wouldn’t notice time slowing down for us compared to everyone else. But if you are traveling at incredible speeds, like in interstellar, their time slowed down because their motion thru time slowed as their motion thru space increased.
Wormholes are basically what happens when you fold a piece of paper and pierce it with a pencil. No one really knows what happens inside a wormhole, but you can imagine that to move between two very distant points in a very short time you need to go very very fast. Einstein’s relativity describes what happens to things that move to a velocity close to the highest possible one (light speed). To understand it, you need to understand what relativity means: imagine three people, one on the platform of a train station, one on a train going in one direction, and one on a train going in the opposite direction: the guy on the second train will move much more faster relative to the guy on the first train than relative to the one on the platform. This happens with time too: the daughter on earth is moving very very slow relative to the speed of light, so time will flow much slower than for the guy who’s moving at near light speed.
*My time has come*
I’m not sure what scene you’re referring to, but to my knowledge, time goes by slower for Cooper then it does for the people back on Earth. When the crew lands on the water planet, a scientist stays back in the main ship while Cooper, Brand, and another guy go down to check it out. They’re only there for a few minutes but back in the main ship decades have passed. The reason for this is that areas with higher gravity have time pass slower relative to areas with lower gravity. [this image](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/39/0d/98/390d984b43d15f03a76783d2715bb6e6.jpg) explains it pretty well – imagine your walking on these squares. It takes you one minute to cross each square, even as they’re getting longer. It still takes you a minute, every time, to cross a square. For someone watching outside, you’ll look like yo’re getting smaller and smaller. So that’s how Cooper came back younger then Murph at the end – time was different for him because he was in an area of high gravity which “slowed” down time for him.
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