With unprecedented precision, a team of German researchers has verified a prediction of Albert Einstein’s special theory of relativity: time moves slower through a moving clock than through a fixed clock, which is called “Time dilation” .
To reach this milestone in physics , the physicists involved in this work (including Nobel laureate Theodor Hänsch) worked with the particle accelerator at the GSI Helmholtz Center for Heavy Ion Research in Darmstadt, Germany. Precisely to test this effect of time dilation, they required two clocks: one that moved and one that was fixed.
The clock in motion was created based on the acceleration of lithium ions to a third of the speed of light, the “ticking” of the clock being the frequency of transitions within lithium. The transitions within the non-moving lithium ions served as a fixed clock. Thanks to this method, it has been possible to measure the effect of time dilation with greater precision than in any previous study .
“It is almost five times better than our old consequence, and 50 to 100 times better than any other method used by other people to measure relativistic time dilation,” says Gerald Gwinner, co-author of the study published in the journal Physical Review Letters and which has been the result of 15 long years of work .
One of the clear examples of having confirmed Einstein’s “time dilation” theory is that, for example, a person traveling in a high-speed rocket would age more slowly than those residing on Earth.
