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Fiction: Star Trek Voyager Finds Earth-like Planet X:
Star Trek Voyager discovers a planet very much like our Earth - the astronauts check it out before landing: gaseous atmosphere, water, mountains, no visible life forms but vegetation - however it is massive, with an extremely high gravitational pull,http://www.topgamesites.net/muonline and enormous orbital and rotational speeds. They report their findings to Communication HQ and their plans for a brief exploratory walk-around, staying close to the ship - they would report again in twelve hours. Then, gingerly, they retro-rocket their craft down to the ground, landing on a large flat plain.

An exploratory team dons oxygen equipment, protective clothing, boots, and carefully descends the ladder to ground level. The powerful gravity force makes locomotion, even arm movements difficult, but they collect samples of the atmosphere, soil and rocks, even water from a nearby stream. Physically tired on returning to the ship, they shower, change clothing, have some refreshments, check the time and take an hour's rest.

At the appointed hour, the crew gathers in the main cabin. Half have voyaged before and know what to expect; first-timers have all been briefed and eagerly await the contact from home. A tone sounds, and on the screen, letters and numbers sequence quickly, as from a keyboard - hour and date.

While they had been under the influence of the giant planet for the twelve hours since the prior communication - on Earth - and for everyone and everything on it - the elapsed time has been two years.

Time Dilation - the Brilliance of Einstein:
Probably the most "accepted" of all human intuitions is that the "passage of time" is a constant - everywhere. All space science fiction, e.g. Star Trek, is based upon such constancy, the complexity of relationships, otherwise, being impossible. However, in the world of true reality - of our universe and the age of Earth - it is not so. In the real world, every space-time-reference-frame location in the universe is perceived and experienced as - unique in its passage of time - dependent upon the local force of gravity and velocity. Time passage on Earth is different than on the moon, than on any other planet, or solar system, or galaxy, or location in the universe. Our watches would keep a different time, our hearts would beat differently. That was the brilliant deduction of Albert Einstein, from a "thought experiment", laid out in his 1905 and 1915 Field Equations.



From the scientific fact that the speed of light is a universal constant - the identicle specific value when light passes an observer, whether the light source speeds toward or away - Einstein theorized (subsequently proven) that, although the beam of light (its speed a constant), traverses a longer distance (mirror reflection and triangulated path) in the same instant-event,it would be the "amount of time experienced" that had to be different; that "time" is what would vary as a function of the gravity field and velocity for individual locations. Since then, scientists have proven his theory and measured those differences.

Einstein's "thought experiment" was brilliant, revolutionary (even magical), yet simple: Time (seconds) = Distance (miles) divided by Speed (miles per second); thus a flash of light viewed by two observers: one moving, one stationary; the distance traveled by the angle-reflected light beam being longer to the stationary observer - as the speed of light is a constant, the "perception" of the observed passage of time for the moving observer (witnessing the single event) had to be less. The difference in "perceived time" is called relativistic time dilation, and the concept was thoroughly proved by the Haefele-Keating experiment in 1972, atomic clocks on Boeing 707 and Concorde SST aircraft, being flown at different speeds, altitudes and directions.