Twin paradox Definition and 318 Threads

I was just working on my knowledge of the twin paradox, and had a question that I couldn't find an answer to anywhere: If I understand it correctly the paradox is resolved because the two frames are not symmetrical, one is non-inertial, so that frame has it's clock run slower. So if you carry...

If you were spinning on a marry-go-round approaching the speed of light, would you experience time dialation?

how about this: silly idea, but think about it: the square root of 1 = {+1,-1} and we all know: t'=t/(1-(v/c)^1/2) in essance, t' must simultaneously have values of {+t',-t'} for all velocities not equal to zero and approaching c. this means that for a relativistic frame of...

Ok so, supposedly you have two twins in [seperate] spaceships, one approaches the speed of light going away from his twin, then decelerates until going the same high speed but opposite direction, decelerates again to stop next to his twin buddy. The twin that did not move (relative to the very...

We use the following formulas for the Lorentztransformation: x’ = [ x / sqrt(1-v**2/c**2)] - [vt / sqrt(1-v**2/c**2)] (1) and t’ = - [ (vx)/c**2 / sqrt(1-v**2/c**2)] + [ t / sqrt(1-v**2/c**2)] (2) The twin paradox reads as follows. Gea and Stella are identical twins. Stella...

We know that the twin paradox is not a paradox since one of the twins accelerate and time passes more slowly for him relative to his twin on earth. My question is why can't we apply the same reasoning for length contraction? If one of the twin A measures the lengths of sticks in the reference...

Homework Statement Two twins, Bill and Ben are 30.0 years old and they leave Earth for a distant planet 12.0 light years away. The twins depart at the same time on Earth, and travel in different space ships. Bill travels at 0.93c, while Ben travels at 0.70c. What is the difference between...

I'm still trying to understand time dilation, the twin paradox, and the effect of acceleration. Yes, I've read the twin paradox FAQ, but it only gets me so far. Here's a hypo I came up with. I've tried to simplify it by (a) making the observers symmetrical and (b) eliminating the...

I've been wracking my brain for days trying to comprehend everything that deals with the twin paradox. I have a vague understanding of relativity and its effects, but am massively confused by most of the explanations given on this forum and other places. I think perhaps it extends from my lack...

I'm kind of a noob who's posted a question or two here before to settle arguments and such. Please don't kill me if this has been covered before. I was reading some stuff about space travel trying to get some creative ideas for a sci/fi book idea I had. Nothing serious and really nothing to...

Hi all, apologies if this has been posted a million times before... I'm trying to explain the twin paradox without getting involved with length contraction. One way to think of it is Twin A remains at rest on Earth then twin B goes off at 4c/5 to Alpha centauri 4 light years away, then...

In the following, "G" stands for "gamma". Clocks O and O' coincide when they mutually read zero. POV is that of K'. Prove: When O' reads T'>0, the coincident K clock reads more than T'. Proof: When O' reads T', O reads T'/G and O' coincides with K clock at x=GvT'. That clock reads...

Homework Statement Anne and Joe are twins, happily living in an inertial frame. On their 20th birthday Joe decides to take a rocket. (a) According to Anne the rocket moves with constant speed v = \frac{3c}{5}. For 6 months it moves away from Earth and then returns in time for Anne's 21st...

I`ve thought about a special sort of twin paradox. I know the usual explanation of the twin paradox but give me please the answer to this special case: Imagine: A static universe (non-expanding) with a closed geometry and a circumference of one lightyear. The twins start their journey in...

Hi everybody! :) can anyone help me with this idea: in the twin paradox, a twin that travels at speed of light in space should be younger than the one that remains on earth. But why can it be other way? Can we say that the twin on the Earth is traveling at speed of light compared to the twin in...

Sorry, I know there are tons of threads about this, but I've been though them all and couldn't answer this satisfactorily myself. You know how it goes. You have 2 twins, A and B, who are magically the same age exactly. They start at the same point in space, each in their own spaceship. They...

In a few places I have read things along the line of this: I am getting confused, because some people say this experiment has resolved the paradox and some people think its still a paradox. How exactly has the twin paradox "been verified experimentally" from the HK experiment?

If the fixed stars/galaxies did not exist, would there be a twin paradox?

I cannot conceive of a complete path which the "away" twin can follow, relative to the "home" twin, that does not involve significant acceleration. A straight line from home to star then back home in reverse, a centrifugal circle from home (0 degrees) to star (180 degrees) to home (360...

I have thought about it and I have found to be confused about something, regarding the twin paradox. As I know it, the twin paradox (set up to emphasize my confusion) is as follows: Two spaceships floating in space pointing away from each other, let's say A and B. When B accelerates and...

Hi, I can see that this topic has been much discussed, but I haven't seen a thread on it with the particular spin I want to give it (just the journey out from Earth). I understand the traditional view of the twin paradox (I think!): Two twins a and b are on Earth and each has a clock. The...

My query is this. In the twin paradox let's assume that one twin Barbara keeps on moving at a relative speed of "c" away from the stationary Earth twin Alex. If I were to be able to be at both Barbara's rocket and the Earth at the same instant ( meaning I could travel through space...

The "False Twin Paradox" I have no problems with the resolution of the classical 'Twin Paradox', but the following "False Twin Paradox" does have me puzzled. (If it was discussed and explained elsewhere, please just point me there.) Instead of the usual accelerating twin at the turnaround...

How exactly to calculate the age difference in "Twin paradox" In so much of the text I have seen the "twin paradox" is resolved by simply showing how the condition is asymmetrical, they make no calculation on how this asymmetry results in age difference. I have seen some claiming that its...

I already posted about this under a different thread (Time dilation for clock thrown up and caught back) but, after reading some of the replies, figured that that was not the right way of attacking my real problem, which is figuring out what happens to time during a Big Crunch. So I will restate...

I heard some scientists say special relativity may not be relative to your frame of reference, but rather possibly distant galaxies or great sources of gravity? I heard they sent a jet around the world with an atomic clock, and also decaying sub atomic particles down a tube, to test special...

I am new to the forums so hello everyone. I have spent time trying to understand the twin paradox, and I have only partially grasped it. What I specifically don't grasp is...what really happens when the traveler changes inertial frames from leaving Earth to heading towards Earth? I know...

Can anyone prove the twin paradox

In the twin paradox, the twin that experiences the most acceleration does not age as much. If I synchronize two digital watches, then put one in a centrifuge for a long time, one watch will experience much more acceleration than the other. If they remain synchronized, why is the acceleration...

Hi all, I'm new here, I was on another forum asking this question but there was a lack of a response, so I hope you guys can help me out! Ok, so after a few weeks of grappling with the twin paradox, I finally accept that the twin that travels on the rocket and back is the one that ages less...

Homework Statement Show that as calculated in the rest frame comoving with the twin on the outgoing trip, the ratio of the two ages of the twins is the same: i.e. the twin on Earth has age gamme times the other twin Homework Equations Lorentz Transforms The Attempt at a Solution We...

I know very little about relativity. I have heard that it implies that----- if A and B be two tweens. If A goes in a space trip and then return to B at earth, he will be younger than B. What I am confused is, It must be same thing whether A went away from B in his space trip on the ship or...

The idea is as follows: My (imaginary) twin and I were born at the same time, thus just as old. Now, my twin made his own spaceship in the backyard, one day, and decided to go for a ride. It had only room for one person, so I had to stay behind. Now, my twin went out of the Solar System and...

Homework Statement Assume a rocket ship leaves the Earth in the year 2100. Castor, one of a set of identical twins born in 2080, remains on Earth to work at Mission Control, while the other twin, Pollux, travels in the rocket. Ignore the motion of the Earth relative to the fixed stars. The...

I'm sure this question has been asked thousands of times before, but I can't see how nature determines which twin accelerates (or is subject to a gravitational field) and which one doesn't. People say one twin will feel the acceleration and the other won't, but suppose neither twin had an...

I know that the frame of reference determines that it is the stay-at-home twin who ages faster than the twin traveling at some fraction of light speed. Some years back, an experiment in which one of a pair of synchronized atomic clocks was placed on a commercial airliner and flown around the...

Resolving the "Twin Paradox" http://mentock.home.mindspring.com/twins.htm I've been trying to follow this unusual explanation to resolve twin paradox, which uses the lorentz relativistic velocity transformation equation to get the speed bob zooms off after Ann at,15/17 C. I can understand...

HI My question is what would the outcome be if the twins started out in 2 ships traveling at uniform .6c relative to Earth and one of them then took her ship and traveled to Earth and back? Which twin would be older?

I'm trying to make sense of the way time dimension is related to the other 3, the example is twin paradox: Observer 1 is moving away at 0.866c from observer 2, who is standing still, then turns around at a defined point and goes back at the same speed, arriving back to observer 2 position...

Homework Statement Identical twins Speedo and Goslo join amigration from the Earth to Planet X. It is 20.0 light years away in a reference frame in which both planets are at rest. The twins, of the same age, depart at the same time on different spacecraft s. Speedo's craft travels steadily at...

It is my understanding that the twin paradox arose from the fully reciprocal nature of special theory which shows that if a clock is moving past me in outer space that clock is ticking over at a slower rate than my clock but that from the point of view of a person accompanying that clock it is...

I can't fully understand why a person who makes a journey into space in a high-speed rocket will return home to find his age less than an identical twin who stayed on Earth. It makes since for the twin who stayed on earth, but for the twin who traveled into space, he sees himself at rest and...

I have a question about the Twin Paradox. I don't know if I'm right or wrong, but that's why I figured I would come here to ask. The way I understand things is that the twin on Earth's clock would end up being faster than the twin's clock out in deep space if the twin out in space was...

Thought experiment / story: Albert the Alien sits atop a non-accelerating comet traveling 0.5c. He approaches earth, barely missing it, and passes on by. After he has passed Earth, he looks back toward it with his ultra-sensitive telescope and sees the face of Hyphy the Human. Hyphy the...

I am just a little bit unsure about something I read on the "twin paradox". It talks about Dick and Jane who are twins, each 20yrs old. Dick departs at a speed of 0.80c to a star 20 light years away. So I'm sure you all know how the story goes, Dick is 50yrs old when he returns and Jane is 70...

So, I was thinking about a variation on the Twin Paradox, and was hoping someone could help me work through it. The motivation is the usual explanation for the Twin Paradox, namely that one twin accelerates and so breaks the symmetry. This begs the question of what happens when both twins ride...

[SOLVED] Twin Paradox problem Here is a problem about twin paradox that I can't quite figure out. I got part a, but I can't get part b. I think that the 6 years spent doing research is kinda throwing me off. Help! The International Space Federation constructs a new spaceship that can...

Suppose one twin travel to a distance L and turn around, another twin travel to a distance L/2 and turn around. When they reunite at home, the twin travel longer will age less? Since they both experience acceleration, so acceleration is not the cause of age difference. Can acceleration break...

suppose we have a stationary observer 'A' at the origin. at t=0 rockets 'B' and 'C' pass the origin moving at gamma=10 but rocket B stops. when rocket 'C' reaches some point along the x-axis rocket 'B' accelerates to gamma=10 as measured by rocket 'C'. when rockets 'B' and 'C' meet its over...

suppose we start with a long line of stationary, evenly spaced and perfectly synchronized clocks along the x axis. if the stationary twin is at the origin and at t=0 the other twin passes the origin moving at relativistic speed with gamma=2 then from the point of view of the stationary twin the...