31 years, 7.6 billion miles

[Push 0]

Anyone got a figure for it's speed? If so, the Einsteinian transform for time is

t' = t / (1-v^2/c^2)^1/2

Of course, this will be wrong because it only works in flat spacetime, and that big red blob over there we like to call Sun curves space.



Honestly, probably about the same. It's speed is still negligible in comparison to the speed of light (300,000 km/s). Think of it this way. How long did it take the spacecraft to get there? 31 years? How long did it take light? 11 hours? Safe to say that time dilation is negligible here.

-- Toggle Whippin' Yahoo
Skydiving is easy. All you have to do is relax while plummetting at 120 mph from 10,000' with nothing but some nylon and webbing to save you.

[indyz 1]

The most recent figure I can find is that Pioneer 10 was accelerated to 132,000 kph after slingshoting around Jupiter in 1973.

[Push 0]

The speed of light in kph is approximately 1,080,000,000. Lets transform one hour of Earth time to one hour of Pioneer time:

t' = 1 / (1 - (132,000)^2/(1080000000)^2)^1/2 = 1.0000000074691358861511212977787

Everyone who says negligible raise their hands Actually, it could accumulate to a couple of minutes, even hours over the years, but in comparison to 31 years that's nothing. Keep in mind that the distortion of spacetime due to the Sun is significant, and will accelerate (I think) time on Pioneer. Dr Kallend?

-- Toggle Whippin' Yahoo
Skydiving is easy. All you have to do is relax while plummetting at 120 mph from 10,000' with nothing but some nylon and webbing to save you.

[aero04 0]

If there were a clock on Pioneer 10, how long would IT say it has been traveling?

I know that the faster an object goes, time slows down (at least that's my concept of the theory of relativity). To leave the solar system, this thing must be cooking!

So, does the spacecraft itself think it's only been up there 30 years? less than that?

I'd be interested in some ejucaded responses.
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I'm certainly no physicist, but I've picked up some physics during my engineering curriculum.

True time slows as you approach speed of light, but at the speed Pioneer is traveling, time is essentially constant. In other words, time has slowed such a tiny amount, if there was a person on board and they returned to earth they would not notice a difference. Pioneer is not moving anywhere near the speed of light, so the passage of time is relatively no quicker then here on earth.

If I'm off base here, please let me know.

[masher 1]

If we assume that Pioneer has travelled at a constant speed over it's journey (31 y = 1x10^9 s, 7.6x10^9 mile = 1.22x10^13 m) then it is travelling at 12200 ms^-1, with respect to (wrt) the earth.


This is the same as the twin paradox. Pioneer has gone to a place 1.22x10^13 m away wrt the earth. It has a speed of 12200 ms^-1 (wrt) the earth.

There is also a length contraction to worry about

So, we think it's travelled 1.22x10^13 m, Pioneer thinks it has travelled 1.2199999989912x10^13 m.

L=Lp*sqrt(1-(v^2/c^2))

So, travelling at 12200 ms^-1, gives us a time of 0.999999999173115x10^9 s. Which is less than the 1x10^9 that we started with. The difference is 0.8 s.

Basically, it's going too slow to have much of an effect.

--
Arching is overrated - Marlies

[favaks 0]

Quote

So, does the spacecraft itself think it's only been up there 30 years? less than that?

The spacecraft itself would thinks it's been travelling for exactly 31 years. The time difference occurs when you compare the clock on earth and one on the spacecraft.

favaks