OK so I know this has been asked but I still don’t get it.
Who do humans age faster/slower? (Shown in interstellar for example) Biologically I don’t understand why the body would age faster?
In: 36
A few good accurate answers are up so I’ll try one that’s more ELI5:
If you need to drive from your house to the store, there are probably multiple paths you can take. So you and a friend can get into your cars and drive to the store and then compare odometer readings: maybe you took 2 miles and your friend took 3 miles to get there. We’re used to that: different paths through space can have different lengths in space but still meet each other.
What special and general relativity add is that when getting from one point in space and time to another point in space and time, your path can have a different “length” in time too.
So you and your friend can get into your spaceships and travel to a different planet taking different paths in space-time, arrive simultaneously, and compare odometer and clock readings and maybe your clock advanced by 6 years and your friend’s advanced by 7.
It’s not anything special about aging or human bodies. It’s that when objects move relative to each other or are subjected to different amounts of gravity (like being closer to a black hole in the case of Interstellar), they take different or lengths of paths through time.
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