Does Driving Faster Make You Younger?

Yes and No. I guess it all depends on who you ask. Say you mastered the art of Time Travel–congratulations you genius!

You’ve successfully constructed the flux time capacitor! You’re now on your way to fix it inside the DeLorean and set the clocks for the future. Now’s a perfect time to disappear into the void of space-time–especially since you recently ripped off those viles of plutonium–you rebel! After you set the clock face to more promising digits, you hit the pedal, and go.

Not only do you look cool as you accelerate (and slowly slip on your sunglasses), but you find yourself speeding beyond so fast that you begin to near the speed of light.

–Doc says 88 mph and 1.21 gigawatts is all it takes, Great Scott!

This leads us back to our original question:

Does Driving Faster Make You Younger?

Does the act of accelerating at speeds near the speed of light actually make you younger? If you asked the people who you left behind, they would certainly notice you hadn’t aged–when you made one last stop to pay them a visit just before continuing on again into the void of space-time to speed past even more decades into the future.

No, you aren’t really getting younger at all–unless you consider getting older a condition that is reversed by appearing the same age–and let’s face it, all the plastic surgery and botox injections only slowed the overall effect at best. As Einstein may have chimed in at this point:

–Welcome to the general theory of relativity.

But still, you wouldn’t be younger, rather slightly older than the same age as you were when you started. Or–the passage of time would appear much slower to you in relation to them–yet the same as it does now, in fact! And, you wouldn’t even notice it sped by so quickly for everyone else–unless there was a way to view this from out the window. Thus, there is a ratio between the duration of time and unfolding of space as a material thing. And our ability to accelerate affects the interaction between the two.

So, is there a limit? If you surpassed the limit of the speed of light, would the cause of your effects reverse?

If so, you’d be a regular Benjamin Button.

Like this: Like Loading...