\n Aug. 24, 2025 9:17 am EST<\/p>\n
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amgun\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n
Did you know that moving a clock one\u2009inch toward the\u2009ground would result\u2009in a slower tick\u2009compared to the\u2009same clock positioned higher up? Gravity doesn’t\u2009just pull things; it also bends time. According to Einstein’s theory of\u2009relativity<\/a>, the stronger\u2009the gravitational field\u2009you’re in, the slower time moves for\u2009you compared to\u2009someone farther from\u2009the mass. This is called gravitational time\u2009dilation, and yes, it exists way beyond the vicinity of\u2009black holes. It’s\u2009happening constantly, right\u2009here on Earth.<\/p>\n Back in 2022, a couple of scientists at\u2009JILA (that’s a joint lab\u2009between NIST and\u2009the University of\u2009Colorado Boulder) conducted an\u2009experiment<\/a> to demonstrate this\u2009effect by placing\u2009two atomic clocks\u2009just one millimeter vertically apart from each other.\u2009Turned out, the clock positioned\u2009near Earth’s gravitational center\u2009operated at a\u2009slightly slower rate\u2009than the clock located\u2009higher up. Which quantifiably proved that even the slightest vertical displacement meant an alteration in\u2009time flow.\u00a0<\/p>\n This experiment confirmed, with precision never seen before, that gravity subtly distorts time on scales as small as a fingernail.\u00a0“The most important and exciting result,” said NIST\/JILA Fellow Jun Ye<\/a>, “is that we can potentially connect quantum physics<\/a> with gravity … It also shows that there is no roadblock to making clocks 50 times more precise<\/a> than today \u2014 which is fantastic news.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n We didn’t just theorize time dilation, we launched it<\/p>\n
Triff\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n Interestingly enough, JILA wasn’t the first lab to run an experiment to confirm this theory. Einstein’s proposal inspired a lot of physicists\u2009to come up with testing methods\u2009for time dilation. The Pound\u2013Rebka experiment<\/a> conducted in 1959<\/a> was\u2009the first major\u2009breakthrough, where they fired gamma rays upward inside Harvard’s\u2009Jefferson Tower. The energy loss\u2009from the climb up the\u2009tower matched exactly\u2009what Einstein’s equations\u2009had predicted because of\u2009Earth’s gravitational pull.\u2009This was gravitational redshift<\/a>, a close cousin of sorts to time dilation.\u00a0<\/p>\n A more direct\u2009test of gravitational time\u2009dilation happened with\u2009the launch of\u2009Gravity Probe A in\u20091976. Scientists used\u2009a Scout rocket to\u2009send a hydrogen\u2009maser atomic clock 10,000 kilometers above Earth. The test concluded that the clock started ticking faster than an identical ground-based clock by a rate of roughly one second every 73 years.\u00a0It doesn’t sound like a lot, but the experiment provided strong\u2009evidence for relativity through its\u20090.01% accuracy level, which was remarkable\u2009for its time.\u00a0<\/p>\n These weren’t isolated efforts, though.\u2009They were the starting point for a chain of increasingly precise tests designed to build a solid case for gravitational time dilation<\/a>. Physicists all over the world were sending things up in the sky to ask if gravity changes time, and the answer came back as a hard yes; again and again.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n Time isn’t fixed, and we are just starting to measure it<\/p>\n
underworld\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n Once the satellites and lab tests gave us a solid confirmation of the existence of gravitational\u2009time dilation, researchers decided to study the Earth instead. They wanted to know if this effect could actually show up in our day-to-day environment.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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