Twin Paradox

[lxxvii24]

I am actually here to ask a question, i have been wondering, Einstein said if there are two brothers ( twins), and one travels to a distant planet at some speed 2ce that of light, lets say it takes him 2mins( to the traveller), to those on earth he travelled for 5o years, by the time he comes bac he would have aged by 2 mins while his brother on earth would have aged by 50 years.

So now, this is my question, is agein a function of TIME

[danny8522003]

If i understand you correctly, then yes.

[5614]

If time stood still we wouldn't age would we?

 

So yes, ageing is a function of time... as time progresses we age, if time goes faster we age faster, if time goes slower we age slower etc.

[DRU]

If time stood still we wouldn't age would we?

 

So yes' date=' ageing is a function of time... as time progresses we age, if time goes faster we age faster, if time goes slower we age slower etc.[/quote']

so theoretically, you would age slower than everyone else if you spent alot of your life on airplanes. correct? or would the difference be too small to notice?

[AzurePhoenix]

Far too small to ever notice, even astronauts who spend alot of time in space going at immense speeds don't notice it; it takes two very accurate clocks (one in the shuttle, one on earth) to detect the difference at all, which is generally fractions of a second I believe.

[swansont]

so theoretically, you would age slower than everyone else if you spent alot of your life on airplanes. correct? or would the difference be too small to notice?

 

No, in fact the odds are pretty good you'd age faster by an amount nobody would ever notice.

 

At 10,000m the gravitational term would make your clocks run ~90 ns/day faster, as you aren't as deep in the gravitational potential. Lower altitude would give you a smaller number, and higher would be larger.

 

Whether the kinematic term would speed or slow down your clock depends on which way you go - SR depends on inertial frames, which the rotating earth is not. We are already rotating east, so travelling east will make you go even faster and slow the clock down, but going west will mean you are going slower, and speed your clock up, all relative to a nonrotating observer. You can more or less double that or eliminate it, depending on direction and speed. West will always give you a faster clock. East means you can go fast or slow, depending on conditions.

 

The experiment was done a while ago: see Hafele and Keating, Science 177, p166-179, (1972) (2 articles, back-to-back)