ELi5 If time is slower at space, would you still age at the same rate as you would on earth?

Question

ELi5 If time is slower at space, would you still age at the same rate as you would on earth?

In: Physics

Answer 1

It’s not really slower in space, it’s slower at high velocity. But effectively no, you would age slower compared to someone stationary, though at the speeds you are at in orbit the difference isn’t that much. You would need to move at pretty significant percentage of light speed before its effects became apparent.

In order to “slow” time by 15% you would have to travel like half the speed of light, which is about 95,000 miles per second. For comparison the fastest made made object peaked at like 60 miles per second. Typical satellites around Earth travel at about 5 miles per second.

Edit: its also probably worth noting this works on an exponential scale, so low speeds will not have much of an increase compared to those same changes in velocity at very high speeds.

Relativity is hard.