Times effect on biological aging?

[Zinalu]

So me and my boyfriend came to talk about this, time is affected already right outside the earths atmosphere where it goes a little slower, so the further away from gravitation, the slower time goes if I have understood it correctly, time always goes, night becomes day and day becomes night, but if we remove the idea of hours and time into an understanding like animals have, they just exist in the present, if we take lets say a deer, their lifespan can be about 14 years in captivity, if two deers get born at the same time, one is sent out into space and one stays on earth, would the space deer become 14 earth years or not? Time goes slower in space, and does that in anyway affect the biological body? Would the space deer live for 14 space years which might be equal to 200 earth years there or would it still live for 14 earth years since the body of the deer might be "programmed" to age and eventually die in a certain speed which equals 14 earth years and doesn't have the knowledge about time at all, since it's a body.

Is biological aging affected by the slower time in space and thus age slower or not?

[swansont]

Time goes faster if you are in a smaller gravitational potential, i.e. farther from the source of gravity. It slows down when you are moving, though, so something in orbit might experience a slowdown or speed-up, depending on the orbit. For GPS, for example, the gravity effect dominates (clocks run faster). One the ISS, it's the opposite. That's why Scott Kelly aged about 5 milliseconds less than his earth-bound twin during his year on the ISS.

 

http://gizmodo.com/why-mark-kelly-is-now-older-than-his-older-twin-brother-1785799892

[Lord Antares]

14 ''space'' years equalling 200 earth years is a great exaggeration but let's use these numbers to simplify the example.

 

Yes, if a deer was sent to space and lived 14 years there, then came back to earth, 200 years would have have passed there, and therefore, it would be seen as 200 years old by the earthlings. Again, these are hypothetical numbers.

However, there would be an effect on its body. It wouldn't age more to ''compensate'' for aging less in space as you put it, put the decrease in gravity would have a different effect on its body. For example, its bones and muscles would be considerably weakened etc.

 

EDIT: Sorry, I need to mention that it works both ways. It depends if it's moving or standing still, as swansont said. If it was standing still with no considerable source of gravity nearby, the effect could be the opposite.

Edited February 9, 2017 by Lord Antares

[swansont]

I think you need to separate the effects of weightlessness (and other space effects, e.g. possible increased exposure to radiation) from the effects of time dilation. Focus on one thing at a time.

[Lord Antares]

Yes, you're right. They're different things.

 

I just wanted to point out, since she asked if the change in time has an effect on the biological body, that time itself doesn't have an effect but there are other factors in space which do.