Previous Challenge Entry (Level 3 - Advanced)
Topic: Time-consuming (02/24/11)
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TITLE: The faster you go, the slower you go | Previous Challenge Entry
By Clyde Blakely
03/03/11 -
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Spaceman Bob: Thank you, my dear. Actually I am around 75 or a hundred, give or take.
SP: Oh, oh. I can see this is going to be another one of “those” interviews. Is my head going to be spinning on this one too?
SB: No spinning around stars and planets; I won’t even refer to those pesky gravity wells you are afraid of falling into.
SP: Thank you so much for that. How can you be around 75 years old and 100 at the same time? Was it because all the time you spent traveling in space that makes you 100 years old and 75?
SB: I am physically and mentally about 75 years old AND I am at retirement age of 100 AND it is because of space travel.
SP: I’m beginning to feel dizzy, I need to sit down.
SB: You are sitting down Miss Parker.
SP: I said that for the radio audience but I do feel I’m getting dizzy. Please explain, but not too technical.
SB: Remember when we talked about how the faster you go time slows down?
SP: Yes, you gave us the example of back in the 20th century where they confirmed one of Einstein’s theories by having two atomic clocks, one on earth and one in a jet. When the jet landed, its clock was slower than the one left stationary on earth.
SB: Very good. With the latest technology I was able to travel close to 100,000 miles per hour. That is over half the speed of light. Not only did the speed cut the time to go from one point to another, but it also kept me young.
SP: I admit you don’t look a hundred years old but how traveling did fast kept you young.
SB: The faster something goes, the slower its internal “clock” runs or to put it another way, the slower it ages. It works for living things too, like a man. Even though time was progressing as it always has on earth and I had no perception of time moving slower, just like the atomic clock on the jet you mentioned.
SP: Were you moving in slow motion?
SB: Oh, no. To me everything was moving just like it would have on earth but my internal clock was running slower due to the speed I was traveling. If someone moving at the speed of earth viewed me while I traveled at 100,000 mph I would have appeared slow to them and they’d appear fast to me. Since my biological clock was running slower than if I stayed on earth, I aged slower.
SP: I think I get it and that’s how we’ve been able to transverse these great distances in space. Something that would take 20 years to get to by earth’s time would take less than 10 years for someone traveling in the spacecraft. Now that’s consuming time!
SB: Wonderful! I love that analogy. Now do you understand why I say I’m about 75 or 100 years old?
SP: Yep, yet they made you retire at 100 while you’re only 75 years old. Isn’t that something?
SB: I argued with them without success. I still have my own spaceship, though, and plan on more exploring for the next 25 years or perhaps 50, depending on how you count it.
Several seconds of laughter’s heard by the radio listeners.
SB: Do you know there is something that travels faster than light, Miss Parker?
SP: If I remember my high school physics correctly, nothing can travel faster than light.
SB: Actually there is one thing: thought. We can transmit our thoughts all the way across the universe to God instantly. What do you think of that?
SP: Well, I know one thing that is sometimes even faster.
SB: And that might be?
SP: Speaking.
SB: You’ve got me here. How’s that?
SP: I know several people who speak before thinking!
SB: I’ve just been bested.
SP: Star Parker here, signing off while I still have time. Enjoy your retirement, Spaceman Bob.
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