If time is experienced faster away from gravity then you’d experience a year’s worth of time on Earth slower than a year out in space, right?
If someone traveled somewhere .5 light years away and back from Earth(1 light year total) to them they would have spent a year traveling from the travelers perspective. How would us on earth observe their total travel time since we would have spent longer in our years worth of time. Would they arrive early or later than a year? Or would they still arrive exactly one year from when they left?
In: Mathematics
This is called the Twin Paradox. The person on the ship would say that less time had passed than someone who had stayed on Earth.
Can’t really give exact numbers here, since in your scenario the spaceship is travelling AT the speed of light, which is impossible and breaks math.
That said, the wikipedia page for the Twin Paradox has an example where someone goes on a round-trip to a star 4 light years away traveling at 80% the speed of light. The whole trip takes ten years to the people on Earth, but six years to the people on the ship. Thus the so-called paradox – a set of twins who split up on such a mission would end up having experienced different amounts of time despite being the same age.
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