Cosmic Radiation Speeds up Aging in Space?

SpaceAdmiral writes "The Theory of Relativity tells us that the faster a person travels the slower time passes for that person relative to someone left on Earth. This means that traveling at high velocities in a spacecraft should reduce one's aging. However, recent research suggests that cosmic radiation may counteract that anti-aging effect. Iron-nuclei radiation affects the aging of cells, which is possibly one of the reasons astronauts who have been to the Moon tend to get cataracts about 7 years earlier than other astronauts."

Comments

Not much connection between those two things

[PIPBoy3000]

Going to the moon and back probably "slows down" time for an astronaut by a tiny fraction of a second.

Getting hit by a lot of hard radiation causes all sorts of cellular problems, not just cataracts.

How are the two connected again?

Re:Not much connection between those two things

[heatdeath]

How are the two connected again?

Exactly what I thought when I read this article. The effects of relativity won't be "counteracted" by cosmic radiation any more than a diet of donuts and lard can counteract the effects of relativity.

Big surprise, radiation kills you.

Yeah, but that won't alter time

[iced_773]

The aging does not "counteract" the relativity. For example, you may look like you aged 50 years, but only 20 will actually have passed for you. Meanwhile, 50 years may actually have passed on Earth.

Cosmic radiation may age you, but it will not accelerate time.

Re:Yeah, but that won't alter time

[SpaceAdmiral]

Oh, come on. I said "counteract this anti-aging effect" not "counteract relativity and slow down time. " Only an idiot would require your clarification.

Re:Yeah, but that won't alter time

[SpaceAdmiral]

That's a fair criticism, but I think in the context it's pretty clear. I mean, the previous sentence explicitly said it was a relative effect. I'm also assuming most /.ers have taken basic high school science. Having said that, the story isn't exactly as I wrote it (it was edited). So, um, I'll use that as my excuse for any further criticism that comes my way.

Isn't this already known?

[caluml]

Isn't this a given? Just as if you expose your skin to UV radiation on the beach all day, it'll age faster. Isn't aging (and cancer) just the decay of the DNA in your cells - aging just making them not grow back properly, and cancer making them grow wrongly?

anti-aging effects?

[cowboy76Spain]

Travelling to great speed does not have an anti aging effect... It changes the "duration" of time, but the effects on the body related to the time spend does not vary. The classical effect of the astronauts who returns to earth 70 years before having aged only 7 years is due to the fact that the astronaut has spend only 7 years in the space (from his point of view).

It's hysterical, and the editors knew it

[jfengel]

From the very tail end of the article: "This story should not be construed to mean that Einstein's theory of Special Relativity is wrong."

Einstein was completely correct. What's wrong is the idea that you can use the time-dilation effect to get to another solar system safely if you can get close enough to light speed, since even short times in space cause health effects. Which has nothing to do with "aging" per se, and even less to do with relativity. And still less to do with NASA's immediate plans, since NASA only has solar-system travel in mind for the next few decades.

So the final tally is:
Space travel: still dangerous
Einstein: correct
Article author: dipstick

Another idiotic title/summary

[sk1tch]

What's with the latest string of intensely stupid articles on slashdot? First XBox downloads of apples outpaces iTunes downloads of oranges, and now a random fact of biology overrules an accepted theory of physics? Why do people write such retarded titles and how do they get posted?

Send in the Robots

[DumbSwede]

What a circuitous way to say that the Cosmic Ray and Solar Activity exposure of Space is bad for you. Scientific American had an in depth article on this just a month or two ago. As it turns out we have no really good ideas about how to adequately shield the human body from radiation in space and the problem only gets worse once you leave what little protection the Earth's magnetic shield provides. And before you suggest Magnetic Shielding or Material Shielding or Electrostatic Shielding, they crunched the numbers on all these things and the results were depressing. You can shield with a high enough Magnetic Field, but the Teslas involved are so high as to be worse that the radiation your trying to shield from (Earth's shield is effective because of size). Physical shielding requires a Meter or more of water all around (impractical because of weight). Etc., ect... We've made NO progress on really effective anti radiation measures in space. There are only coping strategies, so if you want to go to Mars just be prepared to give up 10-15 years off your expected life time on average or at best an early onset of senile dementia because you WILL loose quite a few neurons to radiation to realize your dreams of bounding around on Mars.

As a child I had been wildly enthusiastic about manned space flight or even becoming an astronaut myself some day. The fact that my 11th birthday coincided with the Apollo 11 Moon landing probably has something to do with this (I'll let you do the math to figure out my age). Anyway we've spent over 3 decades going basically nowhere and as it turns out space is a really hazardous place to stay for long periods of time. So while I'm still very much pro space exploration it is time to hand the baton to robots. Insisting that Man can do some things better is probably only true for the short term anyway. Better to embrace our robotic assisted lives by using the space program as a driving program to accelerate robotics instead of as a meat grinder for human flesh.

What NASA should REALLY focus on are sample return missions. That is where the real big bang for scientific buck will come.

Lightspeed reduces ageing?

[Andy Gardner]

Correct me if I'm wrong (and I know you will, this being slashdot :P) but a body travelling at relatavistic speeds would not experience a slower passage of time, a second would still be a second?

As far as I'm aware if your were 20 and traveled at reletavistic speeds for 10 years you would be 30 at the end of your journey. However many more years may have passed at some arbitrary fixed point (relatively).

So this article is basically saying radiation reduces lifespan?

Apples and Oranges non-sequitor

[posterlogo]

"The Theory of Relativity tells us that the faster a person travels the slower time passes for that person relative to someone left on Earth. This means that traveling at high velocities in a spacecraft should reduce one's aging."

Then the article goes on to talk about cosmic radiation causing premature age-jaculation. Talk about apples and oranges... First of all, the obvious... sub-light speed travel does not reduce one's aging -- it would just appear that way (in theory) to a "stationairy" observer (as if there were such a thing). Second, actually using sub-light travel to let the world around you go by faster isn't really plausable, now, is it? Ok, those are the obvious ones. Something actually interesting (because it's real and verifiable) is that radiation does indeed cause telomere shortening. There is a correlation with increased age and shortened telomeres. The experiment should be relatively straightforward with model organisms sent to space, even in earth orbit, but one would have a difficult time proving causality: cosmic rays -> shortened telomeres -> premature aging.

What the article does not tell you, is that the amount of radiation that caused the telomere damage would necessarily also cause other DNA damage. In other words, the premature aging might be the last of your worries if you were actually exposed to cosmic radiation. One would probably die of cancer or radiation poisoning first.

Confused?

[Geoff St. Germaine]

This is possibly the most confused article I've ever seen here. Somebody doesn't understand relativity, but decided to include implications of it in an article about the cellular effects of radiation.