Wednesday, April 25, 2007

time dilation and the international space station

surface radius of earth,
R = 6,378.137 km

orbital radius of the international space station,
r = R + (319.6 + 346.9) / 2 = R + 333.25 km = 6,711.387 km

from gravitational time dilation:

rs = 0.0088356 m

t0 = 1s * 0.99999999934 = 0.99999999934 s

so someone living in the the ISS will be 0.00000000066 seconds younger for every second on earth...
hmmmm

that is... for every 1 earth year... a person living in ISS will be 20.77 milliseconds younger!... so if he/she lives for 48 years in the ISS he/she will be 1 second younger!