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Old 02-21-11, 12:47 AM   #11
Sailor Steve
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Castout View Post
Umm I got that idea from the beginning but how I just couldn't understand it logically speaking. I can grab the idea but not understand why it is so.
Actually it works both ways. The faster you go the longer it takes the light from your starting point to reach you, hence the slower things there would appear to move (assuming you could see them). Unfortunately relativity works both ways, so the light from your spaceship would have the same problem, so the reality is that time would seem to slow down on earth if you could see it.

Or at least that's the way it would work for two spaceships, since neither one is travelling at all except when compared to the other.

Buuuut...

Gravity seems to throw that all out of whack, so to a person in a gravity well (such as a planet like earth) the spaceship, which has no gravity of its own (none to speak of anyway) really would appear to be passing time more slowly. Here's a simple explanation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilation

And this one's a little easier to understand:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_paradox
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