Musings on space-time

Minkowski's transparency show space-time and its geometry. Public domain, taken from wikipedia.

My experience so far tells me that finding the time to do something is a simplification. Often it is not just physical time that is called for. A work day has (say) eight hours, but still some (important) tasks (not necessarily) time-consuming do not get done (by me). So there seems to be a weird connection between physical time (its interval), and the mental time.

Space enters the frame, too. Five minutes in a crowded office do not amount to five minutes in a quiet and work-conductive environment (a library). So when looking for time to do something, you are actually looking for a time-space interval. Space and time are connected – as every visitor to a tea-house knows, and so did the old pioneers of special relativity.

There's more. Massive objects (read: stuff) that occupy space change the notion of time. I find it difficult to focus in a heavily "lived-in" area. Yes, this might come as a surprise to some of my readers. Hence the virtue of an uncluttered work space. I wish I can get there (or part of the way) in the foreseeable future. Funnily enough, the notion that heavy objects affect the flow of time  in their proximity is part of the narrative of general relativity. Mind-boggling, right?