- #281
atyy
Science Advisor
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I guess cfrogue's confusion comes from something like:
1) In SR it is not moving objects that Lorentz contract, but space itself.
2) The distance between the ships is moving, so it should Lorentz contract, since space itself contracts.
3) Yet this moving distance remains the same, thus we have obtained a contradiction.
Well, something must be wrong above. I myself never use this space itself contracts or that time itself dilates, so I don't really have an intuition where the error occurs, but maybe cfrogue can confirm that I have summarized his confusion correctly, and someone else can write the correct version of the above statements 1-3.
1) In SR it is not moving objects that Lorentz contract, but space itself.
2) The distance between the ships is moving, so it should Lorentz contract, since space itself contracts.
3) Yet this moving distance remains the same, thus we have obtained a contradiction.
Well, something must be wrong above. I myself never use this space itself contracts or that time itself dilates, so I don't really have an intuition where the error occurs, but maybe cfrogue can confirm that I have summarized his confusion correctly, and someone else can write the correct version of the above statements 1-3.