Computers travelling at near light speed

[Sarevok]

Objects moving at near light speed experience time differently. At sufficiently high velocity one year for them could be equal to one thousand years for people remaining stationary. Could this be used for making a really fast computer ? Suppose for instance you need to compute a really complex problem. Your computer would need a century to output the answer. So you put the computer on a spaceship capable of near light speed. Its velocity is so high one century on the ship would be equal to one week on earth. the computer calculates the answer and sends it back via radio. To you only a few months have passed.

Is this hypothetically possible ?

[Samuel]

Wrong way around. The computer would have time slow down for it. We'd have a century pass and it would only feel a short period of time.

[bz249]

Objects moving at near light speed experience time differently. At sufficiently high velocity one year for them could be equal to one thousand years for people remaining stationary. Could this be used for making a really fast computer ? Suppose for instance you need to compute a really complex problem. Your computer would need a century to output the answer. So you put the computer on a spaceship capable of near light speed. Its velocity is so high one century on the ship would be equal to one week on earth. the computer calculates the answer and sends it back via radio. To you only a few months have passed.

Is this hypothetically possible ?

Nope they experience time exactly as you... that is the principle of relativity: In physics, the principle of relativity is the requirement that the equations, describing the laws of physics, have the same form in all admissible frames of reference.

So there is an inversion symmetry in the system: for the astronaut in the spaceship the rest of the Universe will move near light speed, thus their computers will be damn slow. But in reality events are fixed, so there is no way to cheat.

BTW: This kind of time dilatation is only valid if the too object will never met again (from that point there is acceleration and that is where general relativity comes into the picture).

[Kuroneko]

Special relativity can deal with acceleration quite easily; all it requires is turning the usual time dilation into a relationship between infinitesimal time increases, thus producing a differential equation. More generally, STR is mathematically identical to GTR with an assumption of flat spacetime.

And as Samuel points out, this would've been useful if time contracted instead of dilating.