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See title: Does one age quicker at higher altitudes?

A few years ago I heard that you would age slightly faster (or slower) at higher altitudes.

Is this true? What is the theory or evidence for this?

Or to put it a little differently:

Does time move faster or slower at higher altitudes?

Qmechanic
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RobbyReindeer
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  • Evidently somebody has read this. Looks like a serious clickbait, the kind of trash (forgive me) designed to distort fact by making propositions blown out of proportion. You want to be careful with that stuff. However, the mention of gravitational time dilation doesn't seem wrong from the onset, so I guess they're arguing that higher altitudes, you're further from the center of mass of the earth, so the gravitational field strength is lower, and time passes slower. –  May 29 '18 at 13:10
  • So the answer to the question may actually be 'yes', though there's the possibility of excessive approximation distorting everything when you consider the mass distribution of the planet. But it's exaggerated by these publications, and should be understood to be minuscule and irrelevant for general purposes. –  May 29 '18 at 13:17
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    @Chair I also remember something about this in a popscience book. That if you wore 2 atomic watches, one on you head and one on your ankle that at the end of you're life (assuming you're not lying down your whole life) they would show slightly different times... – RobbyReindeer May 29 '18 at 13:31
  • Sure, but it's important to remember that you're wearing it your whole life and the difference will still be tiny. –  May 29 '18 at 13:34
  • Related, if not dupe of: https://physics.stackexchange.com/q/256335/25301 – Kyle Kanos May 29 '18 at 13:36
  • https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2010/09/nist-pair-aluminum-atomic-clocks-reveal-einsteins-relativity-personal-scale – JEB May 29 '18 at 16:06
  • Despite what user191954 says in the 1st comment, the gravitational time dilation is a function of the gravitational potential, not the gravitational field strength. – PM 2Ring Sep 17 '19 at 20:21

2 Answers2

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The term you are looking for is Gravitational Time Dilation.

Gravity has effects on the surrounding space-time, directly dependent on the mass of the bodies. This effect is not noticeable to us on Earth unless considering a large timescale, since the Earth is nowhere near massive enough for it, as opposed to extremely massive celestial objects (e.g: black holes and neutron stars).

To give an idea to how little it matters on Earth (same Wikipedia article as first link):

Clocks that are far from massive bodies (or at higher gravitational > potentials) run more quickly, and clocks close to massive bodies (or at lower gravitational potentials) run more slowly. For example, considered over the total time-span of Earth (4.6 billion years), a clock set at the peak of Mount Everest would be about 39 hours ahead of a clock set at sea level. This is because gravitational time dilation is manifested in accelerated frames of reference or, by virtue of the equivalence principle, in the gravitational field of massive objects.[4]

[Emphasis mine]

Using those numbers as reference, we can calculate that if an observer at sea level stayed there for 100 years, someone who would have stayed on the Everest would be older by roughly 0.003 seconds.

Technically yes, relative to an observer on Earth, a person at higher altitudes will age faster.

Leamsa
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  • Maybe this is a bit of a cheeky extension of the original question. But would the cells in the body of the person on Everest age faster? Or would the cells age at the same rate as the person at sea level? – RobbyReindeer May 29 '18 at 13:57
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    @RobE Considering only Gravitational time dilation (there are quite a few other factors), each cell would age differently, albeit by imperceptible amounts. The reason is that each cell is under very slightly different gravitational influences - those in your feet are closer to the Earth than those in your head, thus they are aging slightly slower. – Leamsa May 29 '18 at 14:26
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Omg some people just don't get it. Mainline get it backwards again.

In his theory of general relativity, Einstein predicted that a clock at a higher elevation would run faster than a clock on the planet's surface because it experiences a weaker gravitational force. ... The clocks he is talking about are the world's best experimental atomic clocks

So what this means is that they are both at the same point in time but the clock in space is ahead which means it's covered a longer distance than the clock on the surface, but achieved that by traveling faster than the object on the ground. This is totally backwards. The fact that time slows down the faster you go and not how he explained this above. And by the way this has been proven onboard the space station. So much for Einstein and mainline. Common sense is not so common. Forget Einstein and begin looking at Tesla because mainline science is a complete mess full of errors.

So in theory the guy higher up is slightly younger and not older lol

Truthoflife
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