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Gravity Probe B

Testing Einstein's Universe

Special & General Relativity Questions and Answers

Why is time so different from space in the way we experience it?

A very good question, and so far as I know, completely unanswerable in terms of modern physics. We suspect it is akin to asking why do we experience the spin of the Earth ( day and night) differently than its mass. Time and space are 'just' two kinds of 'quantum numbers' that nature insists on using to keep track of what it is doing. It also needs to use spin and charge, which we 'experience' very differently than even time and space.


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All answers are provided by Dr. Sten Odenwald (Raytheon STX) for the NASA Astronomy Cafe, part of the NASA Education and Public Outreach program.