Re:The theory of relativity in words of four letters or less
by gizmo686 on Friday May 17, 2013 @04:36PM
(#5726580)
>* * * You could swing all your limbs away from your body and use magic to reverse the direction of one of them.
No you can't, this leads to the twin paradox.
Assume you could use magic to simply reverse the direction of an object. Take two clocks, and have one travel away from you at relativistic speeds, then turn around and come back. Because of time dilation, when the clock returns, it will have observed less time pass then you, because it was moving at relativistic speeds. However, from the clocks perspective, you were moving at relativistic speeds, so you will have observed less time pass. The resolution to this paradox involves the fact that the clock was accelerated in order to turn around.
An interesting side point is that in the hypothetical void, you actually have no way of knowing weather or not you are accelerating. For example, the space station is currently in free fall towards the earth, but from within the station you cannot detect this fact. Similarly, if you are in a plane that is descending at the rate of gravity, you will appear to be in zero-g. The mathematics behinds this is considerably more difficult than special relativity.
No you can't, this leads to the twin paradox. Assume you could use magic to simply reverse the direction of an object. Take two clocks, and have one travel away from you at relativistic speeds, then turn around and come back. Because of time dilation, when the clock returns, it will have observed less time pass then you, because it was moving at relativistic speeds. However, from the clocks perspective, you were moving at relativistic speeds, so you will have observed less time pass. The resolution to this paradox involves the fact that the clock was accelerated in order to turn around.
An interesting side point is that in the hypothetical void, you actually have no way of knowing weather or not you are accelerating. For example, the space station is currently in free fall towards the earth, but from within the station you cannot detect this fact. Similarly, if you are in a plane that is descending at the rate of gravity, you will appear to be in zero-g. The mathematics behinds this is considerably more difficult than special relativity.