Since the Sun has an enormous gravity compared to that of the Earth, does that mean that if I were to travel on a spacecraft similar to NASA’s Parker probe I would age much slower and if so, how much?

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Since the Sun has an enormous gravity compared to that of the Earth, does that mean that if I were to travel on a spacecraft similar to NASA’s Parker probe I would age much slower and if so, how much?

In: Physics

5 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Because you are on the earth, you can consider yourself as being in orbit around the sun. So you are already quite far down the sun’s gravity well. You may get a bigger time dilation by doing the other direction and leaving the solar system but I lack the know how to figure it out for you.

Also just to let you know, you would only age slowly compared to a person remaining on earth. Time from your perspective would continue to pass at the same rate so you wouldn’t real have ‘gained’ any time.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Time dialation in any meaningful amount isnt actually possible. In order to be somewhere with enough gravity to drastically change time youd be dead from said gravity

Edit: this applies to living things not clocks on say a probe.

But i beleve i read somewhere a close orbit to the sun would take 60 minutes off a year.

Anonymous 0 Comments

At the Surface of the Sun time runs slower by a few seconds each year compared distant space. The Parker Probe comes within a few million km of the Sun but tens of millions at its furthest.

So, it’s going to not make much of a difference at all. You wouldn’t notice. As said, even if you were standing on the surface of the Sun and somehow survived it’d only be a few seconds each year. You wouldn’t live to see the distant future as it’d only add up to just minutes over a lifetime. And that’s on the surface of the Sun. The effect will drop off quickly with distance.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Yes, but not so much it would be noticable. Add together the speed and the gravity field and my non physics degree having estimate is like maybe a few days younger over a lifetime.

Anonymous 0 Comments

The Sun has a lot more gravitational pull than the Earth, this is true, but from a time dilation perspective it’s not very strong. If you were “standing” on the surface of the Sun your clock would tick slower than a person on the Earth, but only by a very small amount. I think it’s about a minute per year, or something like that. Not much. You need to start getting into the VERY massive objects, like neutron stars and black holes, before you start noticing anything too extreme.