Originally posted by jjw004:
Thank you JB.
It all sounds good but I get involved with details. Medical people tell us an adults person has a heart beat (pulse) of between 60 and 100 per minute. A trained athelete has a pulse between 40 and 60 per minute. Astronauts are in pretty good shape so let's assume an average of 60 perminute, the equivalent of 1 per second.
When things begin to slow down for our traveler at what point will the system be prone to fail. If we slow the ageing by 50 % does that mean a pulse of 30 per minute? A theory that touts the slowing of aging by acceleration or location must be quantified to provide the participants with some remaining life force to survive and continue. I am aware yhay I am baiting the question but it does seem to me that we are being in "very general relativity" with concepts like this one. Cheers.
jjw
The way I see it is that time is measured by change. There are now two possibilities: 1. that life functions do not slow down when time slows down and then your question is valid; 2. that everything slows down in concert so that we are not aware of the fact that we are living in slow motion relative to another reference frame.
It will be interesting to find out which is which. Point 2 might be correct. On the other hand when subjecting ourselves to a huge increase in gravity for a long time in order to slow time down, will probably kill us. This would indicate that point 1 could be correct. At least we know that when two persons are moving at a high speed relative to each other, the time rate each experiences IS THE SAME. Time dilation in this case is observed by each observer when he views the other observer. As I have said it is a kind of "illusion".
Have you considered the case where the twin who is leaving (on average) accelerates at a rate that is less than gravitaional acceleration on earth and comes back by decelerating at the same rate. The twin who has left will then have experienced an average effective gravitational field that is less than what the twin on earth has experienced. This will then imply that the twin that has left could be older than the twin who stayed behind. maybe this is not possible when taking into account that the twin travelling from earth first have to break free from earth's gravity. I have not yet made a full analysis; but raise this possibility because it is amusing.
