The Mystery of Light Slowing and Speeding Up - www.thefinaltheory.com

[baffledMatt]

The question "which one experiences the time dilation" is ill posed. They each will observe time dilation in the other twin's frame. The only question you can then sensibly ask is 'when the twins return to the same frame which one is older?' and this will depend in detail on the accelerations each one has experienced.

Matt

 

[relative_sceptic]

So which one is older, when they return to the same time frame?

Remembering that the traveling twin will experience identical accelerations/decelerations in returning to Earth as the twin who originally returned to earth. The traveling twin will just spend longer in the uniform states of motion in between the periods of acceleration/deceleration.

---steve

 

[Antonio Lao]

The difference between Special Relativity (SR) and General Relativity (GR) is that for SR, reference spacetime frames are in relative uniform motion at constant velocities. These mean that relative acceleration between reference spacetime frames are not allowed. In GR, accelerations and constant velocities are both allowed between reference spacetime frames. And curvature of spacetime is possible only if there is absolute acceleration. This absolute acceleration is hidden inside the mass-energy tensor.

 

[relative_sceptic]

Mmmmmhhhh

So can someone tell me which one is older when they have both experienced identical accelerations on their journeys, but at different times?

---Steve

 

[ram2048]

i don't believe in all that acceleration mumbo jumbo, i believe that time slows as you are in motion.

so let's suppose they accelerated from Earth at the same rate, but on return one instantly stopped and the other kept flying.

at that instant they would be the same age, but the one that stopped would start aging normally again, and the one that kept flying would continue in his rate of "dilated time" depending on the speed.

 

[relative_sceptic]

speed relative to what?
they are both traveling at the same speed relative to each other
In the example I gave they have both experienced the same acceleration forces (but at different times), and have ended up together at the same point at which they started.

How do you choose which one has aged slower?

 

[ram2048]

what follows is ram's theory of time:

time exists only as a function of actions taking place.

if the entire universe stood perfectly still, no time would take place. (or you even if it did you wouldn't have anything to measure it by anyways so...)

when time concerns multiple elements in a closed set, REAL-time is defined as the actions of the object in question versus the actions of every object in the set. if it was two men in space a certain distance apart and one man moves away from the other, the motion of one man would cause time to happen for the other man, and they would both view the motion and time as real. both men would "see" themself moving away from the other man at half the speed compared to the average distance between the two (dunno if I'm explaining that right but whatever).

this part would cover your guidelines, but it excludes the real universe, by creating a "test universe" in which only the 2 guys exist

on a greater existence or set where the whole universe is involved. one man can move away from the other man, and the other man can realize that he is stationary in regards to the rest of the universe and thus the other man retreats at full speed.

consequence of adding a third party to enable "relative" motions

now, here comes the tricky part, REAL-time for us in the universe as part of the set exists in the motions or actions that we take or are exerted on us in relation to the average motion or action of EVERYTHING else in the universe. It functions independantly of whether or not someone is "measuring it"

our PERSPECTIVE-time exists for us as part of the set that exists in our actions or motions etc that exist that are immediately around us and can be measured as phenomena to calculate this time. In order for us to try and realize REAL-time we have to get a bead on as much of the universe and its actions as possible, and measure any of our actions to this whole.

so if you can piece that together you can understand that 2 people perfectly still down to the very molecule and atom in their own universe = no time passing.

as soon as they move time passes, dependant on motion time will pass with the observer feeling the time frame according to his perspective. if only one were to move, they would BOTH age and feel time at the same rate. adding more and more participants makes relative motions more exact (or more pronounced), taking the "average" of everything in motion relative to the whole

 

[Antonio Lao]

There are two types of relative motion. One is covered by special relativity and the other is covered by general relativity.

Special relativity describes uniform relative motion between spacetime reference frames (inertial frames). General relativity describes accelerated relative motion between spacetime reference frames . Only accelerated motion can become absolute. This absoluteness of acceleration can form quantum at the local infinitesimal region of spacetime.

 

[relative_sceptic]

The question was which one ages slower

I see a lot of irrelevant complications and no answer to my question

I suspect that Relativity is unable to distinguish between the two in any meaningful way

I have never seen any argument (including Einsteins) which could justify choosing one over the other

 

[baffledMatt]

The question was which one ages slower

I see a lot of irrelevant complications and no answer to my question

I suspect that Relativity is unable to distinguish between the two in any meaningful way

I have never seen any argument (including Einsteins) which could justify choosing one over the other

All I can say is, go get a good book on relativity and just do the calculation. I would do if for you except that all my GR notes and books are in another country.

Please do this before posting any more specultions of what you 'suspect' relativity might say.

Matt

 

[ram2048]

Say that 2 twins set off from Earth in 2 spaceships, accelerate to the speed of light then swing back around to the earth, one decelerates and lands back on earth, the other carries on in a straight line with no acceleration in any direction. In this case the spacebound twin has experienced no acceleration that the earthbound twin has not also experienced. But the earthbound twin has experienced an extra acceleration/deceleration - now which one experiences the "time dilation"?

that's why i was saying it's not the acceleration but the speed. if they both accelerated to the speed of light at the exact same rate, but one experienced a period of deceleration on return before taking the measurement, the entire period where their speeds were not the same is the calculated part where their times and aging would be different.

if acceleration IS the cause for time dialation, then it can only be measured by RATE of acceleration, because once you stop accelerating and are just cruising at a constant speed, your time would be back to normal.

here's the molecular theory on this one based on electron orbits. basically when traveling at a certain speed, the atoms in an object all get pulled forward because they're connected. electrons have to travel "more" to stay in orbit because of the motion (their orbits have become elliptical relative to the universe, but still circular to their perspective). since they still travel the same rate, but have larger orbits, it takes them more "time" to complete revolutions. at close to light speed, the electrons have a lot of trouble completing revolutions, because the relative paths are stretched out very far.

at light speed, the electrons cannot even complete a revolution because they'd have to travel faster than light to traverse along their path when going forward.

 

[Antonio Lao]

The question was which one ages slower

The one who is accelerating will age slower. This is absolute acceleration not relative acceleration. There is a difference.

 

[Janus]

So which one is older, when they return to the same time frame?

Remembering that the traveling twin will experience identical accelerations/decelerations in returning to Earth as the twin who originally returned to earth. The traveling twin will just spend longer in the uniform states of motion in between the periods of acceleration/deceleration.

---steve

Okay, this is something that, in my opinion, gets overlooked to often when discussing this type of thing, and it leads to a lot of unnecessary confusion.

The first thing to realize is that acceleration does not cause time dilation from the view of the unaccelerated frame. (IOW if you are observing an object that is accelerating, you only have to deal with its velocity at any given moment to determine its time dilation, the fact that it is accelerating has no effect.

Now in the accelerated frame, things are different, If you are in this frame, three factors control how you will measure other objects time rates: the magnitude of the accelleration, the direction the object is with respect to the acceleration, and the distance of the the object.

The second thing is that time dialtion is not something that anyone experiences it is something that you measure as happening in other frames.

Now in your situation, from the Earth Frame, the twin that turned around last ages the least becuase he undergoes the longest duration of time dilation.

From either twins view, Earth time runs fast when they turn around and start heading back (when they are an accelerated frame once they retrun to uniform motion towards the Earth, they will once more measure time running slow on Earth). Since the twin that turns around last is further from the Earth when he turns around, he will measure Earth time as running that much faster during this time. He will return to Earth expecting more time as having passed on Earth than his brother will.

 

[geistkiesel]

I couldn't get the link to work, but based on the example you've provided I'd say you've been very generous in your description (vis: "a bit suspicious"). Anyone who makes the unqualified statement that "...science has no explanation for this...occurance" in regard to the speed of light propogation through verying mediums is less scientifically literate than the average layman, or flat-out lying. Sounds to me as though the makers of this site have an agenda, could you discern what it might be?

i fed my algorithym into my computer which disgorged the following: The authors of the book want to sell copies and make some money.

 

[geistkiesel]

Great, yet another electrical engineer out to rewrite physics. Off to TD it goes.

Even Aggies, electrical engineers at Texas A&M, laugh at this one.

 

[geistkiesel]

Conservation of momentum.


Consider first an atom in the interior of an object. Far more likely than not, this atom is in some sort of stable equilibrium state with respect to other nearby atoms.

When this atom absorbs the photon, it absorbs the momentum contained in that photon, which changes its state of motion. The atom is no longer in equilibrium! The most likely eventuality is that the other nearby atoms will push it back into equilibrium causing it to emit another photon. Since the net effect is that the atom we were observing has returned to its equilibrium state, it retained none of the momentum of the original photon, and thus the emitted photon must have exactly the same momentum as the original photon (i.e. it travels in the original direction).

For atoms near the surface of an object, it isn't surrounded by other atoms so it doesn't experience quite the same restoring force, which causes the re-emitted photon to either be a reflection of the original, or bent from the original.

Yoy are not describing a universally observed process. Mossbauer Effect observations of the recoiless absorption and readmittance of photons tells us the consevation of momentum considerations is an incompete description of the process. The interior of matter, atoms for instance, is not physically, or geometrically, described by Mendeleyev's chart of the elements. The particuliar state of the subelements of an atom may not be scrutinized says the first and last law of quantum mechanical theory. Therefore, it is anybody's guess, what is going on!

 

[relative_sceptic]

All I can say is, go get a good book on relativity and just do the calculation. I would do if for you except that all my GR notes and books are in another country.

Please do this before posting any more specultions of what you 'suspect' relativity might say.

Matt

Oh dear! no need to be so defensive because you can't answer a simple question
I note that you still haven't answered it:-)

I have just been looking at some of your replies so far:-
>In fact, you can even resolve the whole thing - accelerations and all - >with just SR. It's in one of the usual texts on the >subject, but I can't >remember which one. Possibly the one by J. Martin.
>
>p.s. I like the fact that this final theory person keeps telling us physicists >what we do and don't understand. Surely we
>already know this?

You call yourself a physicist, and even seem to think you understand relativity, (I bet you also think you understand Quantum Theory), yet you can't answer this question without your texbooks.

BTW here's a quote (from Will Rogers) that you might be interested in:-
"it's not what people don't know that hurts them. It's what they do know that just ain't so."

Sorry to burst your bubble, but you won't find the answer to this question in any standard textbook - all you will find is avoidance of the obvious contradiction, at the very heart of the theory.
The standard ploy to avoid this question is to say that the one that ages slower is the one who experiences the acceleration(s), which is why I have added the part about identical accelerations.

>The question "which one experiences the time dilation" is ill posed. They each will observe time dilation in the other >twin's >frame. The only question you can then sensibly ask is 'when the twins return to the same frame which one is older?' and this >will depend in detail on the accelerations each one has experienced.
>
>Matt

I have proposed a situation where each twin (or clock) experiences identical accelerations, during separation and returning together - you did not reply to this
I'm assuming you would agree that in this situation the effects of acceleration (whatever they may be) can be ignored, and only the periods of uniform relative motion need be considered. (When considering the Twin/clock paradox, Einstein did not consider that the effects of acceleration were relevant).
Isnt it strange then, that when trying to avoid this
question, "physicists" since then have brought acceleration into it.

Basically this is the paradox:- when considering uniform relative motion, we have no right to say whether a clock is "moving" or "stationary", we can only say one is in motion relative to the other. Now in this case, if we want to calculate how much slower one clock has gone, how do we know which clock to perform our calculations on. The situation is entirely symmetrical. And which one we decide is stationary and which moving is an entirely arbitrary decision, and whichever we choose, we will get the result that it is running slower than the other clock. Clearly when the clocks come together they cannot both be slower than the other.

Also when we choose the Earth as the start and finish of the journeys, we have no right to assume that the Earth is at rest either.

In fact in the great debate between Dingle and McCrea on this subject, McCrea conceded at one point that this was a symmetrical situation, then proceeded to answer a different question.

So, I am still waiting to see a sensible answer to this question.
As I said before, I suspect that Relativity is unable to distinguish between the two in any meaningful way

I reserve my right to ask this question, it is up to the self-styled "experts" to answer it, if they can.

The fact that this debate is unresolved 99 years after the theory was first published, means I won't be holding my breath waiting for a solution.

regards
---Steve

 

[ram2048]

meh, my reply wasn't good enough either?

i said basically if the universe only included these two objects then yes they'd be the same. but the universe does NOT include just these two objects it includes the Earth the sun the stars everything. so when one accelerates it isn't in relation to the other object (although it IS but not trivially so) it is in relationship to its position in the universe as a whole.

hell if there's general relativity and special relativity I'm going to call mine universal relativity :|

 

[geistkiesel]

The place of acceleration in relativity theory.

that's why i was saying it's not the acceleration but the speed. if they both accelerated to the speed of light at the exact same rate, but one experienced a period of deceleration on return before taking the measurement, the entire period where their speeds were not the same is the calculated part where their times and aging would be different.

if acceleration IS the cause for time dialation, then it can only be measured by RATE of acceleration, because once you stop accelerating and are just cruising at a constant speed, your time would be back to normal.

How is acceleration separated from time dilation?. Is this a theoretical postulate or a convenient reply to an unwamted complexity or experimentally defined?

It seems to me that acceleration is a key to much, if not all of relativity theory. For instance, accleration places the acclerated body in a higher energy state than an unaccelerated state. Higher energy states of matter are in higher states of vibration modes that operate to dilate clocks. In an unaccelerated, low energy state, the molecular components of a dynamic entity have wide spectrum of efficient equilibrium, for required interactions, where higher energy state the efficiency of interactions decreases. Eventually a state of vibration can be so violent that efficiency (whatever that is) of intermolecular activity is effectively diminished. Energy exchanges are more swept up in performing trivial tasks of energy exchanges and storage and less to velocity increases for accelerated particles. Time dilation occurs for a similar reason: the frequency of completed "clock cycles" decreases with increased chaos at higher energy level: A form of ordered complexity struggling to perform all the required tasks in the processes demanded at the instant.

Therefore long durations at constant velocity are merely long durations of less efificient intermolecular activity. But all this is set, established, by the accelerations.

I have my "flat earth" model based somewhat on this. Ont he planet surface one will be hard pressed to find a deviation from flat as measured by a laser beam. Eventually, however, a moving object comes to the edge of flat zones, which are more like flat irregulalry shaped regions of flatness, flat plates, quantized plates scattered around as they are and difficult to detect, especiall if one isn't looking. When accelerating into orbit the higher energy state gives one a spherical perspective. when measuring the Earth which from this energy state is clearly measured spherical. Even the moon looks flat, until one achieves a very high energy state like an oribiting trajectory around the moon, but we know it isn't, flat, don't we?. Much of what we view and perceive as a particular shape is socially determined, such as beauty and acceoptable limits of fat, skinny, handsome, ugly ec.

here's the molecular theory on this one based on electron orbits. basically when traveling at a certain speed, the atoms in an object all get pulled forward because they're connected. electrons have to travel "more" to stay in orbit because of the motion (their orbits have become elliptical relative to the universe, but still circular to their perspective). since they still travel the same rate, but have larger orbits, it takes them more "time" to complete revolutions. at close to light speed, the electrons have a lot of trouble completing revolutions, because the relative paths are stretched out very far.

At light speed, the electrons cannot even complete a revolution because they'd have to travel faster than light to traverse along their path when going forward.

How practical is the electron in orbit model? Once we've got all the electrons jammed into their proper energy states in an atom, who is to say this is the way they spend their idle time? In one sense all electrons could be in the same "energy state" as a soup of some kind, a form of supeconducitivity, until a field is exerted. The permamnet superconducting state only appears at low temperature, low energy, when different interaction states are manifest and processes are implied, without violating exclusivity principals. Onlywhen acted upon, ( room temperature)when extracting or ionizing a particle do the energy states appearas significan, as we all observe.

Just some random musings, but as long as there is an implied "I dunno"
everybody gets their own perspective, kind of like SR theorists gets a percpetion unique to his inertial speed.

This isn't a righteous argunment, but maybe it is, the SR postulates are seemingly consistent regarding the laws of physics and the measurement of the speed of light, except for the blatant unphysical "postulates" that effectively separates inertial frames in such a way that the inertial levels have no physical law counter part that can describe the differences as expressed by SR theory, namely simultaneity. Very suspicious.

 

[ram2048]

well it'll have to all come down to my theory that motion = time, so when there is no motion in an atom no relative time is passing for it.

as far as electron orbits i have no idea if that's even real. i am going to assume that molecules or atoms HAVE to move in order for interaction to take place

and that high velocity impedes their movement-interaction in such a fashion that time dilation is caused.

but until some better time-dialation experiments come forth with new information it's pretty much anyone's game :D

 

[Alkatran]

But regardless, the point is that analysis does not stop simply because the abstract concept of "Work" calculated from the Work Function is zero. When a zero result from this purely abstract Work calculation occurs it simply means that a force did not result in the motion of an object in this case [i.e. Work = Force x (zero)Distance]. It does not mean zero effort or energy was expended by the applied force. Yet today's justification for all sorts of energy expended by Newton's gravitational force tries to get by on precisely that thin, flawed argument

I was reading through your post, hit into this, then started skimming. I'm in high school and I can see the flaws here. There is zero work done on the moon because its potential gravitational energy always stays the same (as does it's kinetic energy!). That means that (, gasp,) there is no work being done! You seem to be stuck visualizing the problem from the wrong angle, the fact that the moon is changing direction doesn't imply a change in energy since ENERGY IS NOT A VECTOR - The only thing that matters in determining the "energy" of the moon is it's height and speed, which remain almost constant (assuming it has a circular orbit, of course).

 

[relative_sceptic]

The one who is accelerating will age slower. This is absolute acceleration not relative acceleration. There is a difference.

Except it is possible to visualise a situation where they both experience exactly the same accelerations (but at different times) before returning to their starting point. One has traveled further from the starting point than the other before returning. So during their periods of relative uniform motion one is supposed to age slower, but which one?, since during these periods it is not possible say which is moving and which is stationary. It is not possible also to say that the starting point is stationary.

 

[relative_sceptic]

meh, my reply wasn't good enough either?

i said basically if the universe only included these two objects then yes they'd be the same. but the universe does NOT include just these two objects it includes the Earth the sun the stars everything. so when one accelerates it isn't in relation to the other object (although it IS but not trivially so) it is in relationship to its position in the universe as a whole.

hell if there's general relativity and special relativity I'm going to call mine universal relativity :|

You're right, but SR does treat them as if they are the only 2 objects in the universe, and does not include the other factors you have mentioned.

 

[relative_sceptic]

Okay, this is something that, in my opinion, gets overlooked to often when discussing this type of thing, and it leads to a lot of unnecessary confusion.

The first thing to realize is that acceleration does not cause time dilation from the view of the unaccelerated frame. (IOW if you are observing an object that is accelerating, you only have to deal with its velocity at any given moment to determine its time dilation, the fact that it is accelerating has no effect.

Now in the accelerated frame, things are different, If you are in this frame, three factors control how you will measure other objects time rates: the magnitude of the accelleration, the direction the object is with respect to the acceleration, and the distance of the the object.

The second thing is that time dialtion is not something that anyone experiences it is something that you measure as happening in other frames.

Now in your situation, from the Earth Frame, the twin that turned around last ages the least becuase he undergoes the longest duration of time dilation.

From either twins view, Earth time runs fast when they turn around and start heading back (when they are an accelerated frame once they retrun to uniform motion towards the Earth, they will once more measure time running slow on Earth). Since the twin that turns around last is further from the Earth when he turns around, he will measure Earth time as running that much faster during this time. He will return to Earth expecting more time as having passed on Earth than his brother will.

OK, except arent you treating the Earth as being "at rest". As far as I can see when the spaceship is traveling away from the Earth at a constant speed, you are equally entitled to say the Earth is moving away from the spaceship at constant speed, and the spaceship is stationary, so clocks on Earth should run slower.

 

[geistkiesel]

Basically this is the paradox:- when considering uniform relative motion, we have no right to say whether a clock is "moving" or "stationary", we can only say one is in motion relative to the other. Now in this case, if we want to calculate how much slower one clock has gone, how do we know which clock to perform our calculations on. The situation is entirely symmetrical. And which one we decide is stationary and which moving is an entirely arbitrary decision, and whichever we choose, we will get the result that it is running slower than the other clock. Clearly when the clocks come together they cannot both be slower than the other.

I trust we can alter the question slightlty by inserting that two frames had recently shared a comon stationary frame . Each frame knows its velocity is greater than the stationary common frame. Hiowever, the distance between the frames is huge and merely sending their current clock setting won't work in determining which is the faster frame with respect to the common stationary frame. How may the frames determine which is fastest. The frame clocks are identical with a stationary frame clock pulse rate = 1.

Each frame's clock is pulsing at some frequency where the signals are true pulses, | | | | | | | |. Would not the slowest frame receive a pulse rate from the faster at a slower rate than his own pulse rate?

Likewise, would not the fastest frame determine the pulse rate from the slower was generated at a higher frequancy than his own?

This seems rather trivial if true, having heard all the horror stories of relativity theory that seem to deny the ability to do this..

 

[geistkiesel]

that's why i was saying it's not the acceleration but the speed. if they both accelerated to the speed of light at the exact same rate, but one experienced a period of deceleration on return before taking the measurement, the entire period where their speeds were not the same is the calculated part where their times and aging would be different.

If we assume that acceleration increases the energy state of all matter in the the frame accelerated, and that for the elevated energy, translated into higher frequency rates for all affected matter, the efficiency of material dynamic processes becomes inversely less effecient in energy and force exchanges. This includes equilibrium state processes, velocity a constant. At relativistic velocities the accelerations have been enormous. The efficiency of the energy exchange and force exchnge processes decreases grossly as observed. Lower the energy level, increase the efficiency of process dynamics of the matter undergoing the process.

What is observed in relativistic accelerations? More and more energy used for storing and loading than accelerating, inversely proportionately less for velocity increases.

The lorentz term using velocity as the key is merely a measure of the limiting parameter for that particlular process under scrutiny. What is being ignored is the dynamics of complex energy flow in all material processes.

 

[ram2048]

very interesting. i'll have to look into that one :D

thanks

 

[geistkiesel]

hell if there's general relativity and special relativity I'm going to call mine universal relativity :|

ram2048, I have a problem. I calculated that an electromagnetic sphere whose radius was expanding at a rate equal to c would have a radius equal to c after one second which means the diameter would be 2c afte one second that means the oppositiely directed photons were expanding at a relative rate of 2c.
I was hushed an told be quite. Where is the fallacy in all of this?

 

[ram2048]

i don't see a problem with that... :D

 

[baffledMatt]

You call yourself a physicist, and even seem to think you understand relativity, (I bet you also think you understand Quantum Theory), yet you can't answer this question without your texbooks.

Hmm, sorry I didn't realize that having all the calculations for SR at the tips of ones fingers was a requisite for being a physicist. Does this go for all theories? I mean, should I also be able to solve the 2d Ising model without my books?

Well, I guess I'm not a physicist then... and there I was, doing so well in my PhD and everything...

Matt

 

[relative_sceptic]

I trust we can alter the question slightlty by inserting that two frames had recently shared a comon stationary frame . Each frame knows its velocity is greater than the stationary common frame. Hiowever, the distance between the frames is huge and merely sending their current clock setting won't work in determining which is the faster frame with respect to the common stationary frame. How may the frames determine which is fastest. The frame clocks are identical with a stationary frame clock pulse rate = 1.

Each frame's clock is pulsing at some frequency where the signals are true pulses, | | | | | | | |. Would not the slowest frame receive a pulse rate from the faster at a slower rate than his own pulse rate?

Likewise, would not the fastest frame determine the pulse rate from the slower was generated at a higher frequancy than his own?

This seems rather trivial if true, having heard all the horror stories of relativity theory that seem to deny the ability to do this..

I don't think you are allowed to say that a frame is "stationary", so you also cannot say that the two frames know they are traveling faster than the common frame. They might consider themselves to be stationary and the common frame moving away from them.

 

[relative_sceptic]

Hmm, sorry I didn't realize that having all the calculations for SR at the tips of ones fingers was a requisite for being a physicist. Does this go for all theories? I mean, should I also be able to solve the 2d Ising model without my books?

Well, I guess I'm not a physicist then... and there I was, doing so well in my PhD and everything...

Matt

There you go again, arrogance is quite common in PhD students, fortunately they usually get over it, I'm sure you will too.
What I am trying to point out tho is the contradiction here, I've seen numerous answers to this problem which merely try to avoid the issue or cloud the issue, by pages of calculations and spacetime diagrams, none of which really address the issue.
I'm also trying to say keep an open mind and don't be too sure of what you think you understand, and that you can't blindly accept everything you read in textbooks.
BTW I'm not a supporter of this new TOE guy, it sounds like a scam to sell books to me.

I like to think I can see logical contradictions in arguments, and the bull**** people use to cover them up.
But then who knows.

All I know is that a lot of people have have based a lot of their work on the principles of relativity and if it was accepted that there was some flaw in relativity, their work could be discredited, and their reputations would be diminished. They have a huge vested interest in maintaining the theory as flawless. In which case their motives have to be questioned, and also the validity of the arguments they put forward.
Unfortunately not all scientists have the highest motives, they are as prone to human weakness as everybody else.

Anyway that's enough of a rant, as far as SR is concerned I will just have to wait and hope that time will tell.

---steve

 

[baffledMatt]

By the way...

Mmmmmhhhh

So can someone tell me which one is older when they have both experienced identical accelerations on their journeys, but at different times?

---Steve

Are you aware that this scenario is not symmetric? So any discrepancy between the ages of the twins is not a problem.

Matt

 

[elenaedinburgh]

Thank God for you guys!

 

[vacuum]

Hahaha

The most amazing thing to me is that they've actually provided a link to this discussion on the mentioned site.