Not only did time seem to pass slowly for Astronauts Frank Borman and James Lovell aboard Gemini 7 last month. Time actually slowed down for them, says Rice University Space Science Professor Robert C. Haymes. While orbiting the earth for 330 hours, figures Haymes, the astronauts aged a thousandth of a second less than men on earth.
Haymes calculated Gemini 7's time slowdown by using a formula from Einstein's 1905 Special Theory of Relativity. According to the theory's "time dilation effect"which has since proved true for high-velocity nuclear particles time slows down for an object as its speed increases. At Gemini 7's...