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I heard that if a person ran around another
person at light speed for five minutes, the
person in the middle would age fifty years, but
the person running would only age 5 minutes. Is
that true? If so, why would that happen?
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Question Date: 1999-06-03 | | Answer 1:
It is true that time slows down for someone who is
moving at almost the speed of light, and slows
down more as they move closer to the speed of
light. However, time does not slow down for people
who are standing still, it is just the same as
always. So if one person stood still for five
minutes while another one ran around him at a
speed near to that of light (which is 660 million
miles per hour), the person who stood still would
only age five minutes. The only surprising thing
that would happen would be that the person who was
doing the running would age somewhat less than
five minutes. For example, if the person ran 600
million miles per hour (i.e., nine tenths the
speed of light), they would only age about 2
minutes. If the person ran 1 million miles per
hour (still much faster than any rocketship or
bullet), they would age about 1/1000th of a second
less than five minutes. So for speeds which we
normally encounter on Earth, this effect of time
slowing down is almost always immeasurably small.
| | Answer 2:
I don't know if the numbers you are giving are
correct, but the idea is. The person moving at
light speed does not cause the person in the
middle to age, though.Both people experience their
own relative sense of time. The moving person
would sense only five minutes and the still person
would actually experience 50 years. The only time
when their experiences would be comparable is when
either the moving person stops moving or the still
person begins to move at the speed of light. What
happens is that one person enters the frame of
reference of the other! Neither person affects
the other's sense of time; the still person does
not cause time for the moving person to slow down
and the moving person does not cause time to speed
up for the other person.
The answer to the
question of why is a little harder. Remember that
speed, like miles per hour, is just distance
divided by time. Also remember that the speed of
light is a constant, it does not change. This
means that I could never race a laser beam or I
could never move so fast that I could actually see
the tip of a laser as it moves across a room at
the speed of light. This is because the beam
would have to move at about the same speed as I
was moving--the speed of light. But to me, the
tip of the laser is moving along side of me and
has a relative speed of zero. This is not
possible because the laser has to move at the
speed of light relative to anybody, moving at any
speed. It has to move at the speed of light. So
no matter how fast I go, the laser is always
moving 300000000meters/seconds faster! How is
this possible? Well, if distances cannot be made
shorter, then time must be slowing down. So for
light to move at the speed of light even though I
am moving at the speed of light, time must have
slowed down for me so that the laser moves faster.
Kind of like when you are having a dream where
everything is moving in slow motion.
| | Answer 3:
This seems to be a variation of what is called the
"twin paradox." Imagine you have a set of twins.
One gets on a spacecraft and travels for a while
at almost the speed of light. The other twin
stays on Earth. A consquence of Albert Einstein's
special relativity is that clocks seems to move
slowly to someone who is moving very fast compared
to the person standing still. This amazing idea
has actually been shown to be true! Anyway, if
the twin on the spaceship comes back after he
thinks it's been a year, the twin that stayed on
Earth may have aged 20 years or more. But you
might argue that from the spacecraft twin's point
of view it was the spacecraft that stood still and
the Earth that was moving away very fast. So how
come it was the twin on Earth who aged? The
answer is that in order to get the spaceship
moving at close to the speed of light it had to
accelerate a lot. It turns out that the
predictions of special relativity are not valid
for a person who is accelerating. So there is no
paradox after all.
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