3 ms·
> Imagine taking a vacation back to earth for a year, but popping back to the space station where it has only been a few hours. Hmm, this hasn't really fully c
by MayeulC 6y ago
> Imagine taking a vacation back to earth for a year, but popping back to the space station where it has only been a few hours.
Hmm, this hasn't really fully clicked with me yet (so take what I am saying with a grain of salt, I'd be glad if anyone could clarify/prove me wrong), but speed is relative.
If your station moves fast from the perspective of earth, earth moves fast from the perspective of the station. So, from the perspective of earth, time moves slower on the station, and from the perspective of the station, time moves slower on earth.
If you were to travel back and forth, that would even out (something about having to accelerate in one direction, then another). There is no absolute time reference in the universe.
That can work, however, if you spend some time inside a strong gravity field.
- alextheparrot 6y agoThe general idea was that we can orbit a fixed reference (In this case the earth) at a high relative speed. At high earth orbit (35km), orbiting the circumference (Simplifying assuming a perfect circle) would mean one orbit done per second would be 2/3c. The time delta math (Sqrt(1-v^2/c^2)) puts us at 3 earth days per two space days. The vacationing was more cheeky, in that in this case a 2 week vacation would appear 3 weeks on earth. If there would be some way to quickly switch between modes than 1 week, you would spend more self-referential time doing something than your home clock would count.