Two spacecraft pass by each other in empty space. They are moving at .5C relative to each other. I'm in spacecraft A and I say I'm not moving. So therefore spacecraft B is moving very fast, and so I will say his clock is slower than mine. How do I know who will become the older twin? Spacecraft B thinks the same thing. Who is right? How do I know B's time is slower or faster?
2010-01-22T04:43:56Z
OK The reason for the twin paradox is somehow wrapped up in the acceleration and not the speed done by the younger twin. The real question is: How does acceleration effect the outcome?
troutfisher2010-01-21T20:28:19Z
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While the two of you, A and B, move uniformly the situation is perfectly symmetric and each sees the other's time going slower. The twin paradox comes in when one of you travels far away, then stops and returns at a high velocity in the opposite direction then slows down to match speed with the one "left behind" The accelerations all done by one spacecraft break the symmetry and everyone at the end agrees that the one who made a round trip aged more.
Do this however you want: either the observers in both craft are right, they're both wrong, or it doesn't matter. The only way they'll resolve the issue is to slow down and dock with each other, at which point their clocks will have synchronized. One way to visualize this is to think of all space-time as existing en bloc: that is, everything that's ever happened is happening now from some vantage point, and the same thing for everything that will happen [God, it seems is a Presbyterian, and believes in predestination! ;-) ]. When they meet to decide "who's right," they'll have met in the same point of the spacetime continuum.
i think you have already got area of the respond on your very own clarification, "physique of reference." you're installation diverse frames of reference, the folk on planet A as against the folk on planet B as against some third observer watching the photons from the two planets. i will not be able to do the reason justice yet hunt around for communicate of "frames of reference" and how comparable paradoxes are defined. I actually have a matching grievance approximately wave-particle duality and velocity-of-gentle. If a photon is created, and it has a wave function (life) stretching to infinity in 2 guidelines (dimishing to infinitely small values), did not that wave function basically exceed the fee of light?
Special relativity says that if you have no reference point you can agree on, you'll both observe that the other's clock is slowed. One is correct, and one is a forced observation error. If you can come together in some place that grants a stable reference point, you'll be able to observe who aged slower, and who had observational error.