The effect of Time Dilation in the early universe?

[Brian G Turner]

Two concepts that I hope are familiar to most everyone:

1. The universe became with a "Big Bang"
2. Time dilation means that two objects experiencing different speeds/gravities will experience time differently (from Einstein's theories of relativity).

What's been bugging me for the past week of so is this:

If the Big Bang began from a singularity, or similar concentrated mass, then doesn't that imply that time would have been experienced very differently in the immediate area, than we assume?

For example, when a physicist speaks of "the first second after the Big Bang" isn't that statement relative, and that any energy in existence within that time frame likely to experience a far longer period - say, a billion years, for the sake of this example?

In which case, wouldn't that also mean that any mathematical expression of time to be so relativistic as to be meaningless?

 

[Stephen Palmer]

We need someone with understanding of quantum gravity to answer this.

Also - how did the short period of inflation affect things?

 

[goldhawk]

There has been some recent thoughts about singularities:

No Big Bang? Quantum equation predicts universe has no beginning

Black Holes are Actually "Eternally Collapsing Objects

In otehr words, not every scientists thinks that black holes and the Big Bang esists.

 

[chrispenycate]

If the Hubble theory is correct, it isn't matter that was expanding into empty space, but the universe, the space in which the energy exists that is expanding. Since the energy/particle field is not necessarily moving relative to the space containing it, there is no need for relativistic correction. Actually, as the entirety of space is expanding relatively homogenously (unless it isn't. There's another theory that says it was lumpier than that) time dilation would have been similarly regular.

 

[Mirannan]

Another related subject is the one of how fast things happened in the early universe. Things happened much more quickly in the early epochs, compared to later ones, even ignoring relativistic time dilation. For example, a huge amount happened during the inflationary era; a similar time span (around 1E-40 seconds, I believe) a few seconds later was much less busy. (The very fact that the term "inflationary era" is often applied to a period of time much smaller than a yoctosecond implies this.)

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Is time granular? Is there a minimum time interval, a quanta of time?

 

[goldhawk]

Is time granular? Is there a minimum time interval, a quanta of time?

No, space is not granular. If it was, light would not always travel at the same speed.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

light can go slower in a medium
objects are granular
Energy emitted has discrete quanta
Light itself is very odd. Einstein, light, quantum mechanics and photo electric effect.

Perhaps there is a minimum possible time interval that's a sub division of Plank Time?
I know ONE Planck Time has no known significance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_time

The Planck time is the unique combination of the gravitational constant G, the special-relativistic constant c, and the quantum constant ħ, to produce a constant with units of time. Because the Planck time comes from dimensional analysis, which ignores constant factors, there is no reason to believe that exactly one Planck time has any special physical significance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle

uncertainty principle actually states a fundamental property of quantum systems, and is not a statement about the observational success of current technology.

In the context of signal processing, and in particular time–frequency analysis, uncertainty principles are referred to as the Gabor limit, after Dennis Gabor, or sometimes the Heisenberg–Gabor limit. The basic result, which follows from "Benedicks's theorem", below, is that a function cannot be both time limited and band limited (a function and its Fourier transform cannot both have bounded domain)—see bandlimited versus timelimited.

Stated alternatively, "One cannot simultaneously sharply localize a signal (function f ) in both the time domain and frequency domain ( ƒ̂, its Fourier transform)".

When applied to filters, the result implies that one cannot achieve high temporal resolution and frequency resolution at the same time; a concrete example are the resolution issues of the short-time Fourier transform—if one uses a wide window, one achieves good frequency resolution at the cost of temporal resolution, while a narrow window has the opposite trade-off.

Is Time Quantised?
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-time-quantized-in-othe/

The brief answer to this question is, 'Nobody knows.'

More about time

With its associated Planck length, the Planck time defines the scale at which current physical theories fail. On this scale, the entire geometry of spacetime as predicted by general relativity breaks down.

http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmos/P/Planck+Time

It's not clear how you actually measure a time interval less than time for a photon to traverse a Planck length of vacuum.
1.62 × 10-35 m