Monday, July 11

Could Time And Space Eventually Prove Immortality

I'm no scientist but the possibilities of time and space fascinates me. Sometimes I get the feeling that we could use these to prove immortality. The patterns are probably out there. As Einstein said, 'God does not play dice with the Universe.'

There is the Special Theory which talks of the lives of twins. If one twin stays on earth while the other takes a flight into space, at close to the speed of light, time will go more slowly on the spacecraft. If the spaceman twin returned to earth after say ten years he will be only five years older - but his twin will have aged ten years. The twin in space will not have felt any different to his twin on earth. There is a time dilation in space.

To take it to a more extreme example. If one twin sets off to the nearest star, 4.3 light years away, and travelled at 98 per cent of the speed of light the journey would take him 8.775 years - but his twin would have aged 43.2 years.

If for the same journey one twin travelled at well over 99 per cent of the speed of light, when he returned everyone he had ever known would be dead.

This may appear to be just theory but it has been proven in part. In July 1977, for example, accurate atomic clocks were placed aboard a U.S. satellite and sent into orbit. On their return the clocks were compared with a similar clock at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington. The satellite's clocks had slowed down by a small amount. Time had therefore passed more slowly on the satellite.

I realise that what I have written is very simplistic, but if we can accept that time can be manipulated then immortality and such things as seeing into the past or future are all possible. Well, perhaps.

Graphic: Cleonis

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4 comments:

  1. The Star Trek folks should have expanded their motto to space AND time s the final frontier! Time seems to be malleable, elastic. The big problem I see with immortality is that the planet can barely sustain the population it now has!

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  2. once again.......a fascinating post.

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  3. Really? I must say this is fascinating. so, if a person goes into space they stop aging as quick as we do, I had no idea

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  4. Your theory is interesting I must say

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