Einstein’s Guide to Beating Time: Why Flying Makes You Younger (Sort Of)
Let’s talk time.
Not in the “Oh God, it will be last orders in a minute” sense, but in the Einsteinian, space-time continuum sense. You know, the sort of time that bends if you’re moving fast enough—which, in aviation terms, is basically an excuse to call your holiday a relativity experiment.
According to Einstein’s theory of special relativity, the faster you travel, the slower time passes for you, which means that, technically, pilots age more slowly than the rest of you poor souls stuck on the M25.
Admittedly, the effect is miniscule, but if you squint hard enough and fly regularly enough, you might just die one gin and tonic later than everyone else.
Time Zones – not to be confused with the Einstein stuff.
I once flew from London to New York and landed before I took off, however, I was on Concorde. That’s not time travel though; that’s time theft.
I spent 3 1/2 hours in the air, ate something vaguely chicken-shaped, watched half a film, and still arrived in the past — eat your heart out Dr Who!
Of course, on the return trip, time asked for its money back.
Apart from those who had the privilege to enjoy Concorde, most of us are limited to flying around at Mach 0.85 – 85% of the speed of sound – that’s a little under 500kts.
A knot used to be 1 mph + 15% VAT but then the government changed the VAT rates and now none of us know how fast we’re flying. What I do know though, is that further away from the equator we fly, the quicker the hours whizz by.
Well, ok, the quicker the hours of the ground whizz by, the clock in the plane is always on Greenwich Mean Time – as indeed it should be – Britannia rules the waves! Ah, yes, sorry, that was a couple of hundred years ago – about the same time the men’s team last won the football world cup.
Flying affects us two important ways.
Stature
The whole department knows Tom from Sales is flying to a meeting today – Wow, he must be about to close a multibillion dollar deal. No, he’s trying to sort out the sh*t you caused last month, and the month before that, but for some reason, if the company buys him a ticket, everyone thinks he’s important.
Time dilation
Einstein paid attention in school, especially the day they did that Pythagoras thing with triangles – remember that? Well, it turns out that if you take the back off a clock and drizzle its cogs and springs over a triangle, you can come up with the special theory of relativity. See, he wasn’t really that smart – anyone could do that.
What this means is that the faster one travels, the slower one ages.
Now, we all know that an aging population puts more of a burden on the nation’s health services. So, clearly, we need to ignore the environmentalists and do more flying. If we do, we will all age more slowly and save the country billions of £ in healthcare.
So please, join me, in this most selfless of acts.
Exceptions to time dilation
Travelling by road and train is so slow that the miniscule effect of time dilation is even ‘minisculer’. In fact, the stress incurred in engaging in these ridiculously slow and vulnerable earth bound forms of transport far outweighs any reduction in the aging process. A three hour train journey becomes five, and a two hour car journey becomes an overnight stay on a blocked motorway. Trains and cars should be used merely for travelling to the nearest airport.
I’m going to sue – could any lawyers assist me please?
Airline pilots are obliged to retire upon reaching the age of sixty-five years. We can keep our licences, but we are just not allowed to ‘exercise the privileges’ of said licence. How stupid is that? Effectively, it becomes a long service certificate!
Well, having added up all the miles I have flown and having poured over lots of triangles, cogs and springs, I’ve calculated how much more slowly I have aged and concluded I was forced to retire one day early.
If there are any lawyers out there who would like to take this case on, we could possibly start a class action on behalf of all the world’s airline pilots. Based on the average captain's salary, the settlement figure could be …………..well, enough for a really good night in the pub!
Just one more thought on flying and time. Are you one of those muppets who after a ten hour flight which has made you arrive younger than the family members you are flying to visit, still insists on getting up before the plane is properly parked in an attempt to save another 0.56 seconds?
Some people are just never satisfied!