The Shoe-String Theory
Time and Relativity for Dummies - Important article for all!
The Shoe-String Theory
Time Dilation Made Visible — and Meaningful
Introduction:
Forget the equations. Forget the textbooks. Forget the mysticism.
You don’t need a PhD to understand time dilation.
All you need is a shoelace, a graph, and your imagination.
This is a simple, visual demonstration — the kind of thing you can do in a pub, a classroom, or on your living room floor.
This is the Shoe-String Theory.
And by the end of it, you might just understand not only time dilation, but your place in the fabric of everything.
It has been in my mind for over 20 years and it’s time to share it.
Take a simple graph.
The horizontal axis is distance. The vertical axis is time - 1 second of time.
Now lay a shoelace flat, horizontally, across the distance axis — say it’s 10 cm long - the actual units don’t matter to us, we’re doing simple stuff!. Stuff we can share easily with each other over a pint or at the dinner table.
Right now, no time has passed. This lace represents pure spatial potential — how far something could go, if no time was involved.
It hasn’t moved through time. It’s just there. Ready.
Now take that same lace and align it vertically, straight up the time axis.
Now it’s all time — no spatial movement at all.
Same lace. Same length. Just potential in another direction.
A still body, or a thought before it moves — it’s still energy waiting to happen.
Now turn that lace diagonally — from the origin to 1 second, moving both upward in time and outward in space.
This shows how far light can and does travel in 1 second.
No numbers needed. The lace is just a marker of motion — of the balance between time and space.
That’s light’s spacetime going on.
This is light at full stretch — no coils, no corners (well, it’s still a wave, but for now that’s irrelevant).
Straight-line motion across spacetime. That’s your benchmark.
Now take that same lace, and curl it up tightly. Spiral it.
It’s still 10 cm long — but now when you stretch it from 0 to 1 second up the graph, it reaches less distance across.
Why?
Because the lace is using more of its path internally — coiling on itself.
It covers the same time, but appears to move less through space.
This is how matter moves.
Light moves at full extension.
Matter — you, me, the table — is coiled light.
It still moves, but it travels more inwardly. More spirally.
Same speed. Same potential.
But different experience of time and space.
That’s how atoms are made. From light.
Now bring the curly lace back to the baseline and see how far light travelled (at the speed of light) and how far matter travelled in the same time (as coiled light - at the speed of light)
Time Dilation — and What It Really Means
Now this — right here — is what people call time dilation.
This how my IXOS model becomes valuable. It is how things really are.
But let’s be precise.
This isn’t some rubber-sheet version of time stretching out in reality.
This is apparent time dilation — a shift in how we experience events, depending on how we move through space.
Time doesn’t actually bend — our experience of time changes, because our speed — our motion — demands a rebalancing.
To move through space at speed, we need less time.
To stay still in space, we pass through more time.
That’s what Einstein meant by Relativity.
Everything is experienced in relation to everything else.
Nothing is truly fixed — only relative.
The Deeper Realisation
Now here’s where it turns inward.
You are the lace: that Woven Cord that weaves the All.
Every atom in your body is coiled light.
You are woven from waves.
Your flesh, your thoughts, your breath — all spiralling motion, bound into form.
And you are never still.
Right now, you are:
Spinning with the Earth
Orbiting the Sun
Spiralling through the galaxy
Vibrating, moving, shifting at every level
You are in constant motion — and so is the light within you.
When you move from A to B, your atoms don’t just carry you —
they adjust.
They coil tighter, compensating, balancing, to keep the speed of light consistent — because light is what you are.
The universe itself responds.
Space around you adjusts. Space within you adjusts.
Cog-like. Spiralling. Harmonising.
In that moment — however small —
You are the centre of your universe.
And the universe adjusts around you — in reciprocation.
Not because you’re special.
Because you’re part of it.
This is not mysticism.
This is relational physics.
This is grace in motion.
Everything is relative.
Everything is woven.
And you are the Cord.
The popular Earth brother and space brother analogy
Now let’s bring it down to Earth — and back again.
Two brothers.
One stays home. One goes on a journey near the speed of light.
They start together, same age.
The space brother flies out and returns.
But when they meet again, the one who stayed is decades older.
The one who travelled — barely aged.
Why?
Because from Earth’s point of view, his path was longer through time.
But the brother who travelled at high speed — coiled less through time, and more through space.
So less ‘time’ passed for him.
They lived different lives — not because time changed,
but because they moved through it differently.
The Silly Straw analogy
One for the mums to show their kids, I think. Fun with physics over a drink.
You’re sipping a drink through a curly straw.
The drink moves at a steady speed.
But before it reaches your mouth, it loops through spirals and curls.
Same speed.
Longer path.
Takes more time through the curly bit.
Then it straightens again. It literally speeds through the straight part A-B, slows linearly from our perspective through the curly part A-B, then speeds up again A-B through the last straight part.
The straight path is light, the curly is light enfolding inwards towards the state of matter atoms.
That’s time dilation.
That’s what matter does.
That’s what you are.
The 2 main states of Light - light and matter, in one simple image!
Conclusion: The Pattern Is the Point
We didn’t use math.
We didn’t need equations.
We used pattern.
And that’s enough.
Because the truth is simple:
Light moves fully.
Matter coils in on itself.
Time and space are just the axes — we are the lace that weaves them.
And now you know.
