I've heard the nearer you go to the speed of light time slows down.I think they proved it on the space shuttle

Question

(with synchronized watches)

Answer 1

You may be referring to the experiment listed below.

Unfortunately that seems to refer to a scientific paper and no results appear to be on the internet as far as I could tell.

Answer 2

Time dilation (time slowing down) was observed in 1941.  

A comparison was made of the population of cosmic-ray-produced muons at the top of a mountain to that observed at sea level. Although the travel time for the muons from the top of the mountain to the base is several muon half-lives (at the speed of light), the muon sample at the base was only moderately reduced.

This is explained by the time dilation attributed to their high speed relative to the experimenters. That is to say, the muons were decaying about 10 times slower than if they were at rest with respect to the experimenters.  

Answer 3

You also notice it in GPS satellite clocks, which differ from ground based clock by a fraction of a second before getting corrected again.

Time does not slow down for the satellite,  only how you see it from Earth.

Answer 4

They proved it on earth. 2 airplanes, each with an atomic clock on board left an airport which also had an atomic clock. One flew east, one flew west - both flew around the earth and landed at the same airport. When they left all 3 clocks read the same. When they got back all 3 were different, accordingly.

Another fact - the clock on satellites has to be corrected for movement. Otherwise GPS systems, phone calls, etc., would all have messed up times.

Answer 5

True.

It is called "Time Dilation". Albert Einstein figured this out while he was working on his theory of relativity as a patent clerk.

The closer you get to the speed of light, the slower time goes by for you.

If you traveled to the nearest star and back at near light speed, 8 years would have gone by on earth... but only a few months for you.

Answer 6

That's true.  The combined speed of any object’s motion through space and it’s motion though time is always equal to the speed of light.  This is the basic principle of time dilation.  If you move through space faster, time must slow down to reciprocate.

Answer 7

This is Einstein's theory of special relativity. It has been supported by evidence from many different types of observations and experiments. Two that come to mind, because they're so often mentioned in the textbooks, I guess, are one where they flew and atomic clock around the world in a jet and compared it before and after to one on the ground. The result jibed with the theory perfectly. Another is the observation of particle decay rates at low and relativistic velocities - again, the theory is supported. But I haven't heard if they did this with the Shuttles.