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

Young..

[onion2k]

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

Miss Young was unavailable for comment.

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?