A winding staircase in Austria's Melk Abbey (file photo).
Posted on 09/26/2010 2:54:10 PM PDT by JoeProBono
Like a vignette from The Twilight Zone, new research shows that you'll age slightly faster standing on a staircase than you do on the floor below.
The finding is linked to the strange, time-bending effects of Albert Einstein's theories of relativity, which for the first time have been shown to affect earthbound distances and time frames.
(Related: "Einstein's Gravity Confirmed on a Cosmic Scale.")
Specifically, Einstein's special theory of relativity predicts that time does not flow at a steady rate, and it can be affected by acceleration. As a result, a clock speeding away from an observer will appear to tick slower than a stationary clock.
This theory is the basis of a famous thought experiment known as the twin paradox, in which a twin sibling who travels on a fast-moving rocket ship would return home younger than the other twin.
The equations of relativity also predict that gravity similarly slows down, or dilates, time.
"So if you are experiencing stronger gravitational pull, then your time is going to go slower," said study co-author James Chin-Wen Chou of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Atomic Clocks Show Gravity Slowing Time
The time-slowing effects of acceleration and gravity have been demonstrated in experiments that compare real clocks on Earth's surface with timepieces in high-flying spacecraft and satellites, such as ones used for global positioning systems.
(Related: "Every Black Hole Contains Another Universe?")
But the new study, appearing in this week's issue of the journal Science, shows that these effects are also measurable here on Earth's surface.
The pull of gravity on an object increases closer to the center of mass, so an object on Earth's surface actually experiences a slightly stronger pull than one floating in the atmosphere.
Using two ultraprecise atomic clocks, Chou and colleagues showed that lifting one clock by only about a foot (33 centimeters) above the other creates enough of a gravitational difference that the higher clock ticks slightly faster.
In a second experiment, the team measured the effects of relativity on the time-keeping aluminum atoms inside the clocks.
Atomic clocks work based on the number of vibrations an electrically charged atom experiences as it moves between two energy levels. For the clocks used in the experiments, one second is equal to more than a million billion vibrations.
In one of the clocks, the team nudged the normally stationary aluminum atom so that it gyrated back and forth as it vibrated. As Einstein predicted, the clock with the moving atom ticked at a slightly slower rate than the second clock.
Before anyone rushes to lower elevations, though, the NIST scientists note that these effects are much too small for humans to perceive directly—adding up to approximately 90 billionths of a second over a 79-year lifetime.
"It's not a road to youth," said Daniel Kleppner, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who was not involved in the study.
A winding staircase in Austria's Melk Abbey (file photo).
I knew a one story house was a good idea.
Unfortunately this means that Michael Moore is practically eternal.
Dumbacrates are already hard at work on a way to tax that 90 billionths of a second.
Yes, but only in the Time Illusion we live in - four seconds behind us (wrong to think linear but it helps with the sentence ) Republicans have been in charge for the last few decades... no new taxes in that dimension.
Always being the one to have to disillusion the feeble-minded is a dirty and thankless job, but somebody's gotta do it.
Relativity is a bunch of BS, black holes are a bunch of BS, the "Bit Bang(TM)" is a bunch of BS, and the one universe which we observe and live in is the only one that there is. Relativity was based entirely on thought experiments and not on any sort of real evidence. Thought experiments are not a rational basis for physics.
I’ve always been one to advocate that God creating the universe, etc. in such a short span of time, is explainable by Einstein’s theory of relativity—haha!
So, all you people living at higher altitudes won’t live as long as the rest of us near sea level (relatively speaking that is :). You’ll grow older and grayer faster. Guess that makes places like Denver, the mile-high city, a death trap :).
Like a vignette from The Twilight Zone, new research shows that you'll age much faster standing on your mother-in-law`s staircase than you would in your own house.
Some of the longest living people on Earth live at high altitudes.
Who knew Helen Thomas spent her formative years in Nepal?
Agnes Moorehead as the old woman in The Twilight Zone episode The Invaders
That says there’s still an opening in the world for somebody who can build more accurate clocks. There’s money to be made in things like that.
Russell Humphreys proposed a model which incorporated the Theory of Relativity to explain how a 'thousands of years old universe' and a 'billions of year old universe' were not incompatible (it took the effects of gravity on time, and the 'relative' position of the time observer).
An article is here:
And a post to the book is here: Starlight and Time
So many of the things that people who don’t pay attention are calling fantasy or pure mental exercises are elegantly demonstrated in the physical world.
Einstein’s theory about gravity bending space sent scientists scrambling to photograph an eclipse. In the end it was proven when stars behind the sun were photographed during an eclipse. Today astronomy commonly uses gravitational lensing to see even deeper into space.
There’s plenty of theoretical science that hasn’t been proven or possibly can’t be proven but there’s plenty that has been proven as in the case of clocks.
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