Although a person at rest and a person traveling at great speed will experience the effects of time dilation with relation to each other and what we will call Atomic Time, it seems problematic to say that their physiological time has been altered—that their minds and bodies have experienced a different unit of time. Of course, it is problematic to say that they have not; for it seems natural to assume that (using the popular example of a light beam reflecting between two mirrors as a time-keeper) that both the individual at rest and the individual in motion will maintain the same ratio of heartbeats per light revolution relative to their own set of "mirror-light clocks"...and therefore they would be experiencing the effects of time and aging at different rates. However, I believe it's quite possible, perhaps even "safe to say," that we're missing something—that we do not understand what we might call the "human element" of spacetime theory.
Let's say that Person A is at rest and Person B is traveling away from them at a speed at which their atomic time moves at one-third the pace of Person A's atomic time. Person B travels for one [Earth] calendar year with respect to their own atomic time—Person B's atomic clock will show that three years have passed in that same period. But, this is a description of a relationship between these two people as it relates to speed, distance, and time...but not their experience. Can we use this same equation to describe the "time" kept by the two individual's minds and bodies? Can we say that their selves, their beings have experienced a different "amount" of time?—perhaps they have travelled different distances through time as we currently describe it—but it does not seem correct to say that their beings have become altered and divorced from each other in the same fashion that their relative "spacetimelines" have.
Perhaps there's a new time constant waiting to be discovered?—a constant that separates the human experience from the confines of speed and distance—a new way to describe the body and mind's aging and relationship to the concept of time and the universe that we find ourselves in.
Click the "Burnin’ Both Ends” album cover above to listen to my latest record for free!
"Balmain has emerged with an album that sounds like it could have come out of Detroit in the early-1970s or Muscle Shoals in the late-1970s. It’s a vibrant and rich mix of rock and soul that has all of the swagger of the feel-good decade...(Brian F. Johnson, MARQUEE MAGAZINE )
