Daily Time-Warps

“Exploring the peculiar effects of Einstein’s relativity is no longer rocket science. Tabletop experiments at a lab in Colorado have illustrated the odd behavior of time, a strangeness typically probed with space travel and jet planes. Using superprecise atomic clocks, scientists have witnessed time dilation—the bizarre speeding up or slowing down of time described by Einstein’s theories of relativity. ‘Modern technology has gotten so precise you can see these exotic effects in the range of your living room,’ says physicist Clifford Will of Washington University in St. Louis. The experiments don’t reveal any new physics, Will says, but ‘what makes it cute and pretty cool is they have done it on a tabletop.'”