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

So...

[op12]

...time to put on my tinfoil suit!

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

[isometrick]

The article (and the summary) are merely speculating that when close-to-c travel is possible, the radiation might counter the "anti-aging" effect of Einstein's paradox.

It merely provided an example of the radiation possibly causing an acceleration of aging. This does not mean the astronauts in question were majorly affected by relativity.

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.

Perfect solution for clones

[shaitand]

All we have to do is bombard clones with the right kind of radiation and we can rapid grow them now.

Re:Perfect solution for clones

[Dr. Eggman]

Ehh, some people like dry, fake-math based jokes and some people don't...

Bah!

[GillBates0]

Bah! You young 'uns and your fancy schmancy "cosmic radiation". In my day, we didn't have this uppity "Iron-nuclei radiation". We got by with regular sunshine in the day, moonlight during the night and we liked it.

Young..

[onion2k]

One way or another, NASA plans to keep their astronauts feeling young.

Miss Young was unavailable for comment.

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

[grasshoppa]

If I may:

This means that traveling at high velocities in a spacecraft should reduce one's aging.

No it won't. I will reduce the appearance of time's progression on a person, from everyone outside that persons sphere of perspective. They will still have lived the same amount of relative time as someone else would have.

You weren't clear, and it sent shivers up a lot of people's backs.

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.

Re:Yeah, but that won't alter time

[dougmc]

Relativity makes great sense.

Obviously not, because your description shows that you're confused about how it works. Which isn't surprising -- most people are. I've got a degree in Physics, and I still find much of this stuff to be very counter-intuitive.

As for the situation of a guy travelling at 0.99999c for a while and then coming back to Earth at the same speed, the two trips do NOT cancel out. The difference is that the traveller was accelerated to that speed, then deaccelerated until he stopped relative to the Earth, and then accelerated back to 0.99999c in the opposite direction, and then deaccelerated again (we hope) when he reached the Earth. You can't just magically reach a given speed -- you have to be accelerated to that speed, and that's where the situation of the traveller is not the same as the situation of the Earth.

If you traveled at half the speed of light (assuming time doesn't pass at warp 1): 50 years pass on earth, 25 for you.

1) warp 1 is usually considered to be the speed of light, not 1/2 c.
2) time dialation is not linear. At 0.5 c, time would be slowed by a factor of 1/sqrt(1-0.5**2) or only about 15%, not 50%.

Re:Yeah, but that won't alter time

[dougmc]

I know that you can't just be accelerated to C or 1/2 without infinite force.

You can't reach 1 c, because it would require infinite amounts of energy ... that's one way of looking at it, and as accurate as any other. As for 0.5 c, you can reach that -- you'll just need massive amounts of energy to accelerate a macroscopic object to that speed, at least by our current 20th century standards.

All I'm saying is that we won't know untill we try

Until we try what? Try to accelerate Geraldo to 0.5 c out of the solar system? I'd pay a dollar to see that!

The effects of relativity have been measured experimentally. Atomic clocks put onto planes and flown around the world have been found to run very slightly slower, and subatomic particles that are known to last for X picoseconds have been found to last much longer when zipping about at 0.999c. Neat stuff -- coming up with theories like this is one thing, but actually showing the effects in the real world -- that's what's really neat.

Re:Yeah, but that won't alter time

[steve_bryan]

If humans could only react to sound, then Einstien would likely have said that nothing goes faster than sound because we can't percieve it faster than sound.

If you are going to pontificate on a subject you might want to spend a little time actually studying it first. Einstein's idea that the speed of light was independent of observer had a lot to do with the results coming from Maxwell's equations and the null results of the Michelson-Morley experiment. Only a dilettante could think there was a useful analogy to the speed of sound in this context.

It is also worth noting that time dilation and lorentz contaction are effects of special relativity that are verified on a daily basis in particle accelerators everywhere around the world. It is not a subject on which one holds an opinion except insofar as how you want to explain the overwhelming amount of independently measured results.

This part of physics has now been around for over a century (Einstein's first paper on relativity appeared in 1905) and the math behind it has been around even longer. There aren't too many books on differential geometry for the layman but there are many good sources of information about relativity theory by Kip Thorne, John Wheeler and others.

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?

Cataracts?

[Philip K Dickhead]

No! I drive Rincoln-Continentar!

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).

Lying makes you go blind DOUBLE PROOF

[netsavior]

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 So basically this proves what my mom said Lying makes you go blind. It also proves that the moon missions were fake.

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

Small Sample

[SEWilco]

I'm all in favor of further study on a larger number of people who go at least as far as the Moon.

It gets worse

[nizo]

When you travel near the speed of light just think of how many more cosmic rays you collide with since you are going so fast.

Re:SAMPLE SIZE??? !!!

[HTTP Error 403 403.9]

I mean c'mon. Is the sample size really large enough to make a call on the average number of years it takes for the onset of cataracts? How many people have walked the surface of the moon?

I did a survey at my cubicle and I conclude that 100% of the Earth's population agrees that the sample size is too small.

Cataracts?

[nightsweat]

I had heard the astronauts get Cadillacs earlier which, ironically, is also a sign of premature aging.

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?

The Start of Something New

[Quirk]

Others have commented on the nonsense of the story as posted but there is another angle. Much progress in biology and more especially in medicine has come from the study of pathologies. We assume a healthy organism then study a pathology to gain some insight into the changes the pathology has wrought. Further we reason from the state of the pathology to better improve our model of a healthy organism.

The classic example in neuroscience is the case history of Phineas P. Gage.

Space travel and Space Stations have provided us with a burgeoning catalogue of studies on the impact of extended stays in space on our and other metabolisms. The Biomedical Results From Skylab are an example of earlier studies. Space promises unique biological insights.

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.

Whoa...

[FusionDragon2099]

The Fantastic Four must be pretty old at this rate!

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?

Re:Lightspeed reduces ageing?

[steve_bryan]

The article is really only about the pervasive threat of radiation that humans face if they leave the Earth and its protections behind. They genuflect about time dilation which is a consequence of relativistic physics but don't even try to explain. What we have known theoretically and have verified experimentally for about a century is that space and time are mixed together in a very algebraically specific way when viewed by different observers who are in relative motion. One consequence of this theory is called time dilation which means that each observer in relative motion sees the others' time as being dilated (slowed down) relative to what he experiences in his own frame of reference. I know this sounds paradoxical but it is nicely explained in Spacetime Physics by Taylor and Wheeler, Gravitation by Misner, Thorne and Wheeler and many other sources (maybe check Wikipedia).

What is quite incredible is that if we could build a ship capable of constant 1 g acceleration we could travel just about anywhere in the universe in what appears to be about 40 years to people on the ship (see chapter 6 of Misner, Thorne and Wheeler for the mathematical details). Of course it is worth noting that all our space exploration has been conducted with ballistic missles which are nothing like a spacecraft capable of constant 1 g acceleration. There is significant reason to doubt that it is possible to build such a device. But it is true that humans are quite comfortable with 1 g acceleration (that is equivalent to the force of gravity at the Earth's surface). I think that it is beyond merely remarkable that relativistic physics guarantees that if our range would be so great if only such a spacecraft could be built.

What this article and a much more complete similar article in Scientific American (March 2006 page 40)explain is that radiation puts a severe damper on the ecomonics of space travel. Pioneers of space flight have been flying by the seat of their pants when it comes to radiation shielding. Frankly I suspect it is a second order problem in the cosmic quest. If we could devise a starship capable of constant acceleration then just encase the whole thing in as sufficient water or something similar to duplicate Earth's protective atmosphere. Assemble it in space far up in Earth's gravity well with material mined from asteroids. Of course there is still the issue of inventing those darn dilithium crystals.

Imagine traveling to another galaxy and returning in less than one hundred years as experienced in your reference frame while the Earth has aged about 4 billion years. Who says we can't have time machines? The only problem is that they are all one way, into the far future. Check these musings in Kip Thorne's book Black Holes and Time Warps

ROTFLMAO

[PortHaven]

Hey Slashdot,

"How LOWWWWWW can we go?"

This is "recent" research. Sheesh. I remember hearing about cosmic radiation's effect of aging when I was like 4 yrs old. (I just turned 30.)

Anyways, can someone please review the articles for some relanvancy to life. I mean, sheesh, this is a known issue. It's why one of the discussions regarding all deep space missions revolves around how best to shield the crew from cosmic radiation.

*yawn*

Oh yes, btw,...let me show you this great new revolutionary idea I've come up with.... I call it the "Space Shuttle"

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.

Relativity does not slow down ageing

[lithium100]

The whole point of relativity is that time is "relative". If I am travelling at 0.8c then I still age at exactly the same rate as I would on earth. Its just that 50 years to me might be 150 years to everybody back on Earth. We all still age exactly the same way in our own frame of reference. Its only when someone looks at me through a telescope that they realise I still look young whilst they have aged.

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.

Re:Some Questions

[Detritus]

It's a bigger rock (13x larger than helium), and it causes more extensive damage in the cell when compared to helium nuclei. I don't think the exact element is too important. The damage is related to mass and kinetic energy. Iron is just a relatively common element, being the waste product of large stars.