Washington: If you want to grow a few more inches, well this just might be the most expensive solution to your height concerns.
Astronaut Scott Kelly, who returned on March 1 after spending 340 days on the International Space Station, is now about 2 inches taller than when he left Earth.
NASA’s Jeff Williams said that gaining height was expected and is temporary, explaining that astronauts get taller in space as the spine elongates, but they return to preflight height after a short time back on Earth.
That means if the 52-year-old astronaut were to stand next to his identical twin, Mark Kelly, he would probably get to gloat.
Interestingly, Kelly is actually a little less than 1/100th of a second younger than he would have been if he stayed on Earth. The explanation for that’s a little tricky and it has to do with Einstein’s theory of general relativity. If two objects are moving at different speeds, time runs more quickly for the slower object, a phenomenon called time dilation.
Though he’s no longer an astronaut, Mark volunteered to take part in NASA’s “Twins Study” with his brother. NASA wants to see how the identical twins measure up after a year in two very different environments: Scott in space and Mark on Earth.(ANI)