Time Dilation and Its Impact on Our Understanding of Reality

 As a physics student, I’ve often heard that time slows down near massive objects, but I’ve struggled with understanding what this truly means. While it’s commonly said that "clocks slow down" in high-gravity environments, it seems almost unbelievable that spending just one or two years near such an object could correspond to decades passing on Earth. The key insight here is that it's not just clocks ticking slower, it’s everything.

In a stronger gravitational field, all biological and physical processes slow down. Our heart rate decreases, neural activity slows, and bodily functions adjust to this new time frame. However, we wouldn’t perceive this slowdown, because our brains would also be affected, meaning everything would feel normal from our own perspective. The fundamental laws governing biological rhythms, chemical reactions, and even atomic processes effectively redefine themselves according to the gravitational environment.

From this perspective, time may not be a fundamental property of the universe, but rather an emergent phenomenon—possibly a result of entropy. While it feels real, we might only experience it psychologically, not as an independent physical entity like matter or energy. This aligns with certain interpretations in quantum mechanics, where particles do not physically experience time, yet still undergo changes in state.

If time isn’t fundamental, then many physical laws—such as velocity, acceleration, and causality—would need to be redefined. Without time, the concept of cause and effect becomes problematic, as we wouldn’t be able to say "this happened before that" in a sequential way. Instead, events might exist in a superposition, where past, present, and future coexist simultaneously, much like quantum states.

Quantum entanglement further challenges the idea of sequential causality. When two entangled particles interact, any change in one immediately affects the other, without requiring a time delay. This suggests that some processes in nature might operate outside the conventional flow of time, supporting the idea that time itself is not a fundamental necessity.

If this hypothesis is correct, then what we experience as "time" might simply be the transition between different quantum states, rather than an independently existing dimension. However, this raises deeper questions: Does quantum superposition mean we are limited to specific transitions rather than infinite possibilities? Could the passage of time simply be the way we interpret state changes rather than a separate entity guiding them?