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

[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.

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

[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!

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?