Science Question Time
The other day I hopped in my SR-71 Blackbird, chucked an atomic clock on the back seat, and then flew around the world. Now, when I landed back in Perth, I compared the atomic clock from the backseat of the Blackbird with one I had left at the airport.
The clock from the Blackbird had lost time, it was actually a fraction of a second "younger".
This is not science fantasy, it is science fact. I travelled into the future, faster then usual and not just because I was in a Blackbird.
The clock is only younger when compared to the control clock but isn't that the same with everything? If a tree falls in the woods and nobody hears, does it make a noise?
Why is it "science fact"? because some guy said so, even before Blackbirds rocked the sky. I'm not the only person who has tested the theory either, so you can't just reject my own experiments.
In 1971, scientists J. C. Hafele and Richard Keating did the most direct test of relativity possible. They flew one set of atomic clocks around the world on a commercial jet air liner and then compared them to a reference set left behind on the ground. The clocks flew strapped to the front bulkhead in coach class. The plane flew around the world to the east taking 41 hours to fly the entire circuit. The experimenters recorded the altitude and speed of the plane, which flew at an altitude of 10 km (30,000 feet) above sea level, and a speed of 800 km/hr (500 mph). The atomic clocks on the plane lost 59 nanoseconds overall. They lost 184 nanoseconds because of their speed of travel relative to the earth surface clocks, but they also gained 125 nanoseconds due to the gravitational red shift.So I was wondering if someone could explain to me why someone travelling fast doesn't age as fast as other people just sitting around?
To check their results, the scientists then flew the clocks around the world again the other way. Both flights confirmed the predictions of relativity to within the experimental measurement accuracy of 10%. - Sourced here.
What would happen to someone who left Earth's orbit and stayed in a geostationary orbit around the Sun? When the Earth came back a year later and that person's spacecraft was collected again by the Earth's gravity, would they be a lot older then the people who stayed on Earth?
I also read this:
Suppose Einstein was destined to die in a year. If you sent him off into space, close to the speed of light, and he returned after ten Earth years, would he still be alive? Hafele pauses: "Yes. But he'd die as soon as he landed."wtf?
Geez this stuff messes me up. I was hoping someone could try and answer my questions and explain some of this relativity stuff to make more sense, if possible, to someone as ignorant as me.