Can you get younger by traveling at the speed of light?

Five years on a ship traveling at 99 percent the speed of light (2.5 years out and 2.5 years back) corresponds to roughly 36 years on Earth. When the spaceship returned to Earth, the people onboard would come back 31 years in their future--but they would be only five years older than when they left.

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Will I age slower if I travel at the speed of light?

Changes to time and distance

Perhaps one of the most famous effects of special relativity is that for a human moving near the speed of light, time slows down. In this scenario, a person moving at near light speed would age more slowly. This effect is called time dilation.

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How much slower do you age in space?

The difference isn't noticeable though — after spending six months on the ISS, astronauts have aged about 0.005 seconds less than the rest of us.

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What would happen if humans traveled at the speed of light?

If an object ever did reach the speed of light, its mass would become infinite. And as a result, the energy required to move the object would also become infinite: an impossibility.

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What if I traveled at the speed of light for one year?

At 99.99999 percent of the speed of light, for a year, more than 2000 years would pass on Earth. The point is, the closer you get to the speed of light, the more time dilation is experienced.

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Why Do We Age Slower In Space?

44 related questions found

How long would 1 light-year take?

Light-year is the distance light travels in one year. Light zips through interstellar space at 186,000 miles (300,000 kilometers) per second and 5.88 trillion miles (9.46 trillion kilometers) per year.

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What is 1 light-year in human years?

For most space objects, we use light-years to describe their distance. A light-year is the distance light travels in one Earth year. One light-year is about 6 trillion miles (9 trillion km). That is a 6 with 12 zeros behind it!

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Is anything faster than light?

In special relativity, the speed of light is the ultimate speed limit to the universe. Nothing can travel faster than it.

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What speed can humans survive?

Changes in speed are expressed in multiples of gravitational acceleration, or 'G'. Most of us can withstand up to 4-6G. Fighter pilots can manage up to about 9G for a second or two. But sustained G-forces of even 6G would be fatal.

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Is light or dark faster?

Shadow Racing

This is a little hard to wrap your head around, but shadows can move faster than the speed of light, even though nothing can move faster than the speed of light.

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Is one hour in space 7 years on Earth?

Explanation: The clock in space ticks slower than the clock on Earth, hence LESS TIME than Earth in SAME TIME. One hour on Earth equals 0.0026 seconds in space. Thus, by our calculations, we find that one hour on Earth is equivalent to seven years in space.

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Can gravity slow down aging?

Can you Age less if you live in an environment with more Gravity? No, definitely not. Clocks tick slower in more gravity, but the time on clocks has nothing to do with aging. The force of gravity is the cause of motion and stress that causes physical age.

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What does outer space smell like?

Other astronauts have described it in similar yet varying ways: "burning metal," "a distinct odor of ozone, an acrid smell," "walnuts and brake pads," "gunpowder" and even "burnt almond cookie." Much like all wine connoisseurs smell something a bit different in the bottle, astronaut reports differ slightly in their " ...

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Does time dilation affect aging?

Albert Einstein's 1915 theory of general relativity proposes an effect called time dilation. This means that you would age slightly slower or faster depending on the gravitational field, an effect that can be measured with atomic clocks located at different elevations.

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How much time would pass at the speed of light?

Light travels at a constant, finite speed of 186,000 mi/sec. A traveler, moving at the speed of light, would circum-navigate the equator approximately 7.5 times in one second.

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Can I time travel if I move faster than light?

The takeaway: Travelling at speed can change your experience of time, but time travel by traveling faster than the speed of light is sadly not possible.

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How fast can humans travel in space without dying?

Nothing can travel faster than 300,000 kilometers per second (186,000 miles per second).

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Can a human survive Mach 1?

If human manoeuvre that speed Mach 1(1225 Kph), the air friction will increase the body temperature enormously. It will almost boil the body. The strange symptoms including temporary vision loss, loss of c...

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How many g's can a human survive?

Normal humans can withstand no more than 9 g's, and even that for only a few seconds. When undergoing an acceleration of 9 g's, your body feels nine times heavier than usual, blood rushes to the feet, and the heart can't pump hard enough to bring this heavier blood to the brain.

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What is the speed of dark?

Darkness travels at the speed of light. More accurately, darkness does not exist by itself as a unique physical entity, but is simply the absence of light. Any time you block out most of the light – for instance, by cupping your hands together – you get darkness.

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What is the fastest thing in the universe?

So light is the fastest thing. Nothing can go faster than that. It's kind of like the speed limit of the universe.

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Can we travel back in time?

Time travel to the past is theoretically possible in certain general relativity spacetime geometries that permit traveling faster than the speed of light, such as cosmic strings, traversable wormholes, and Alcubierre drives.

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Do you age in light-years?

Five years on a ship traveling at 99 percent the speed of light (2.5 years out and 2.5 years back) corresponds to roughly 36 years on Earth. When the spaceship returned to Earth, the people onboard would come back 31 years in their future--but they would be only five years older than when they left.

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How long would it take to travel 500 light-years?

The light travels at the speed of 1 light year. Therefore, if we assume light to be travelling, then it will travel 500 light years in 500 years.

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How long would it take to travel 3000 light-years?

One of the most distant exoplanets is 3,000 light-years (17.6 quadrillion miles) away from us in the Milky Way. If you were to travel at 60 miles an hour, you would not reach this exoplanet for 28 billion years.

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