Is there a place on the Earth where a person ages faster or slower (very deep underwater or very high in the mountains, etc.)?

Jaroslav Kores, Ph.D.

(Source: stock.adobe.com)

I imagine the place where I am on holiday is such a place :D But if we tried to answer this question purely from the physical point of view, there is no place on Earth where we would age noticeably slower.

Einstein’s theories of relativity reveal two insights about time — it passes slower if we are moving (special theory of relativity) and it passes slower if we are in a strong gravitational field.

So if we wanted to age slower, we can choose two ways — live in a plane/high speed train/space station (but it’s not on the Earth) or be as close to the centre of the Earth as possible (or move to the Sun or a black hole).

But neither way will bring the desired results — we would either have to move at very high speeds (at least 10,000 times faster than rockets) or be in at least a million times stronger gravitational field (the Sun).

Then we would “save” units of seconds for each year of our life.

For example, on the ISS space station (it moves at a speed of about 8 km/s), after a year, astronauts are 0.000001 seconds “younger” than people on the Earth.

So it would be more efficient to always be on holiday :D

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