How Does Time Dilation Affect Colony Ships A and B in Relativity Theory?

[Dropout]

Been asking this since 1994.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

50,000 years have passed since Colony spaceship A and Colony spaceship B launched from Earth. Like in a star trek episode, they all reverted to barbarism, and then regrew a new technological society. Forgot where they came from, and what theyre doing. Theyre big colony ships.

Colony ship A gets on the radio and finds out that they are 1 light-year away from Colony ship B. They start commmunicating with each other, and discover they are also at rest with each other. They decide to join forces, but Colony ship B's propulsion system is broke. So Colony Ship A then accelerates REAL FAST at 99.99999999999999% the speed of light in 1 minute to dock with Colony ship B, 1 year later Colony Ship A decelerates and then docks with the other colony ship.

So according to relativity colony ship A only aged a few hours, while Colony Ship B aged an entire year.

WRONG!



------B ----------A

C

Some guy on Planet C that's monitoring the entire situation, notices that Colony ship A and B are wizzing by at 99.9999999999999999999999% the speed of light. Planet C sees that A decelerates to zero, then reaccelerates to 99.99999999999999999% the speed of light to dock with B. PLanet C notes that B experienced time dilation the entire time.

So what is it?

A) A new universe is created for Planet C that says Colony Ship B experienced time dialation.

B) Each particle in the universe has a history log showing every velocity change, so paradoxes like this can't happen.

 

[Janus]

Neither. You need to take the Relativity of Simultaneity into account for planet C and length contraction into account. Assume that Ship A and B synchronize their clocks before A leaves to join B. Now As the ships fly by planet C, Planet C takes note of the Times on the Clocks. He will note that ship B's clock runs about 1 year ahead of Clock A, And that they are only about one light minute apart.

So A stops (His clock now run at the same rate as C), for 1 min to let B catch up, then speeds back up to B's speed. B's clock, which undergoes time dilation during this time, changes very little, so that when they meet up, B's clock is one year minus 1 minute ahead of A's clock. The same result seen by the ships. No paradox.

 

[Dropout]

According to A and B, what they see is that they are 1 lightyear apart. C may see length contraction as entirely different thing.

I meant acceleration and deceleration is an unrealistic 0-c in 1 minute, for mathematical simplicity. The trip though is 1 year, for mathematical simplicity 99.99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% the speed of light.

The ships have no windows and don't see the outside universe, only radio contact with each other, and being at rest with each other.

 

[Dropout]

Relativity states that Ships A and B being at rest with each other are a universe unto themselves, being that there is no universal speed of light or speed of rest, and every frame of reference for every particle at rest with each other is a universe unto itself. So therefore ship A being at lightspeed for a year should experience the time dialation.

 

[JesseM]

Dropout, did you read Janus' response? The answer is that different frames define "simultaneity" differently, which means that two events which happened simultaneously in one frame happened at different times in another frame. In A and B's rest frame, up until the moment A accelerated their clocks were synchronized--the event of A's clock striking 12 happened simultaneously with the event of B's clock striking 12, for example. But in C's frame the two clocks were not synchronized--instead he sees B's clock ahead of A's clock, so for example, he might see B's clock strike 12 at the same moment that A's clock strikes 10. So even though he does see A's clock speed up after it accelerates (because A's velocity has decreased rather than increased), A will still be behind B when they meet, simply because B started out so far ahead of A...even though A narrowed the gap by ticking faster, it still did not catch up with B, from the perspective of C's frame. If you like, I can work out an actual numerical example to show just how this works, and why both frames will predict exactly the same answer about what A and B's clocks will read at the moment they meet.

 

[Dropout]

Ok, planet C is monitoring the radio transmissions of both ships A and B. When the ships A and B dock and start talking to each other what will planet C hear them say?


Ship A, "I experienced time dialation."

Ship B, "I experienced time dialation."

 

[Janus]

Neither. No one ever "experiences" time dilation, it is always measured as happening to the other frame.

 

[Dropout]

Neither. No one ever "experiences" time dilation, it is always measured as happening to the other frame.

Im not being anal about simultaneouty, and exactly what time they have at their clocks at one particular point in time. I want to know what they said to each other when they docked. What did they SAY?

Ship A verbalized something to Ship B, and Planet C was monitoring the entire situation. What did Ship A say?

 

[Dropout]

drawing in ASCII don't work very well

 

[Janus]

Im not being anal about simultaneouty, and exactly what time they have at their clocks at one particular point in time. I want to know what they said to each other when they docked. What did they SAY?

Ship A verbalized something to Ship B, and Planet C was monitoring the entire situation. What did Ship A say?

Ship A: While I was accelerating towards Ship B, Ship B's clock jumped about a year forward in time.(Ship B's clock ran fast.) While I was traveling at a constant speed towards Ship B and braking to to a stop, Ship B's clock ran slow.
Ship B: While Ship A acclerated towards me, traveled at a constant speed and braked to a stop, Ship A's clock ran slow by varying amounts depending on its relative velocity WRT to me at the moment.

Planet C: Both ships Clocks ran slow until Ship A decelerated to a stop and its clock clock kept the same time as mine. Ship B's clock continued to run slow. When Ship B caught up to ship A, ship A accelerated back up to speed with ship B and its clock started to run slow again.

 

[Dropout]

Ship A: While I was accelerating towards Ship B, Ship B's clock jumped about a year forward in time.(Ship B's clock ran fast.) While I was traveling at a constant speed towards Ship B and braking to to a stop, Ship B's clock ran slow.
Ship B: While Ship A acclerated towards me, traveled at a constant speed and braked to a stop, Ship A's clock ran slow by varying amounts depending on its relative velocity WRT to me at the moment.

Planet C: Both ships Clocks ran slow until Ship A decelerated to a stop and its clock clock kept the same time as mine. Ship B's clock continued to run slow. When Ship B caught up to ship A, ship A accelerated back up to speed with ship B and its clock started to run slow again.

So your saying ship B verbalized to Ship A, "You aged 1 year, while we only aged a few minutes."

 

[Dropout]

From the colony's ship point of view during that 1 year. Colony Ship B gets on the radio and transmits across space to Colony Ship A, "Hey that's amazing, our scientists were correct about time dialation, your clock is running slow Colony ship A, since you accelerated towards us and are now traveling at 99.99999999999999% the speed of light."

PLanet C listens to Colony Ship B's transmission and starts to think, "WTF are they talking about? Colony Ship B is suppose to experience time dialation." A great debate begins on Planet C about the validity of their theories on time dilation after listening to that broadcast.



















From the colony's ship point of view during that 1 year. Colony Ship B gets on the radio and transmits across space to Colony Ship A, "What is going on Colony ship A? We are reading you accelerated towards us at 99.99999999999999% the speed of light, you should be experiencing time dialation, but we are actually the ones experiencing time dialation. We must already be traveling at 99.99999999999999% the speed of light and you actually slowed down to the universal speed of stop. We will build a telescope to see if we are passing any galaxies up, oh look we just passed a planet C."

PLanet C listens to Colony Ship B's transmission and starts to think, "Yeah that's right, our scientists were right about relativity."















I used three numbers for mathematical simplicity.

A) They are 1 lightyear apart from their point of view, so if they traveled at the speed of light it would take 1 year to get there.

B) Acceleration is nearly isntant, for simplicity purposes I wouldn't have to get anal about exactly how much time passes during acceleration. Make it 0 to light speed in 1 minute, yeah it would make mush of their bodies but its not theoretically impossible.

C) Top speed is 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% the speed of light after acceleration, again its not theoretically impossible for matter to travel that fast.

So one or the other will age 1 year. Its either one or the other that experiences time dialation. It doesn't really matter what happens enroute, simultaneuty doesn't matter, what matters is after they meet up and determine who experienced time dialation. Once those ships broadcast over the universe a radio wave about what they said, then its written in stone what exactly happened otherwise 2 universes are created each one with different radio waves transmitted across the universe.

 

[Dropout]

Im specifically asking what they VERBALIZED to each other because verbalization is something that can't get bogged down in simultaneouty of events or mathematics. I remember physics classes and the way they bent space in that cone of light in different frames. It was all fine and dandy when dealing with with pulses of light, in fact it made perfect sense.

What is impossible is for one observer to see this ---.--

and another observer to see this ...-..

 

[Dropout]

OH yeah, and another thing that is strange, length contraction.

Brownian motion on a nuclear scale. In the sun at its hottest spot, you got Hydrogen atoms going close to the speed of light because of speed. Maybe not OUR sun, but atoms in very hot places are being bounced around in a brownian motion that are close to the speed of light.

At any particular point in time, you can have a Hydrogen atom in one galaxy going 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% the speed of light in exactly the same direction of another Hydrogen atom in another galaxy going just as fast.

According to length contraction, from an outsiders point of view, those two hydrogen atoms will be right next to each other, not separated by millions of light years, but right next to each other. Most of matter is made up of empty space anyways, our bodies are mostly made up of space, even lead is made up of mostly empty space. What makes length contract? Dont know, but solid matter doesn't exist in the universe anyways, so I am guessing that if your traveling in the same direction your part of the same body that can shrink.

 

[Janus]

So your saying ship B verbalized to Ship A, "You aged 1 year, while we only aged a few minutes."

No, read it again.

 

[Janus]

From the colony's ship point of view during that 1 year. Colony Ship B gets on the radio and transmits across space to Colony Ship A, "Hey that's amazing, our scientists were correct about time dialation, your clock is running slow Colony ship A, since you accelerated towards us and are now traveling at 99.99999999999999% the speed of light."

PLanet C listens to Colony Ship B's transmission and starts to think, "WTF are they talking about? Colony Ship B is suppose to experience time dialation." A great debate begins on Planet C about the validity of their theories on time dilation after listening to that broadcast.

Only if the inhabitants of planet C had no understanding of Relativity. If they understood Relativity and what it predicts, they would have no problem with this at all.

From the colony's ship point of view during that 1 year. Colony Ship B gets on the radio and transmits across space to Colony Ship A, "What is going on Colony ship A? We are reading you accelerated towards us at 99.99999999999999% the speed of light, you should be experiencing time dialation, but we are actually the ones experiencing time dialation. We must already be traveling at 99.99999999999999% the speed of light and you actually slowed down to the universal speed of stop. We will build a telescope to see if we are passing any galaxies up, oh look we just passed a planet C."

PLanet C listens to Colony Ship B's transmission and starts to think, "Yeah that's right, our scientists were right about relativity."

Again, this would happen only if all the participants did not understand Relativity. For one, in SR there is no such thing as a "universal speed of stop", or absolute frame of rest. If these "scientist's" version of Relativity includes such a frame, then it is not SR.

I used three numbers for mathematical simplicity.

A) They are 1 lightyear apart from their point of view, so if they traveled at the speed of light it would take 1 year to get there.

B) Acceleration is nearly isntant, for simplicity purposes I wouldn't have to get anal about exactly how much time passes during acceleration. Make it 0 to light speed in 1 minute, yeah it would make mush of their bodies but its not theoretically impossible.

C) Top speed is 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% the speed of light after acceleration, again its not theoretically impossible for matter to travel that fast.

So one or the other will age 1 year. Its either one or the other that experiences time dialation. It doesn't really matter what happens enroute, simultaneuty doesn't matter, what matters is after they meet up and determine who experienced time dialation. Once those ships broadcast over the universe a radio wave about what they said, then its written in stone what exactly happened otherwise 2 universes are created each one with different radio waves transmitted across the universe.

You just can't disregard simultaneity, nor the observations of the participants during the trip like that, as they are integral to understanding Relativity. And Relativity says: That while all the participants will agree to what the respective clocks on ship A and B will read when they meet, They will not agree on how they got that way.

 

[Janus]

Im specifically asking what they VERBALIZED to each other because verbalization is something that can't get bogged down in simultaneouty of events or mathematics. I remember physics classes and the way they bent space in that cone of light in different frames. It was all fine and dandy when dealing with with pulses of light, in fact it made perfect sense.

What is impossible is for one observer to see this ---.--

and another observer to see this ...-..

Why?

Let's use an analogy:

Person A is standing next to a tree and decides to judge its height by comparing to the thumb of his outstretched arm. It is 20 "thumbs" high.

Person B is standing a fair distance from the tree and makes the same measurement, he measures the tree to be 2 'thumbs' high.

To someone not used to the concept of perspective, this would seem impossible. How can two people see two different heights in the same tree?

The same thing happens with Relativity, in this case our Observers are viewing the same space-time interval from different perspectives. They are seeing the same "Reality", but are just seeing it from different viewpoints.

 

[Janus]

OH yeah, and another thing that is strange, length contraction.

Brownian motion on a nuclear scale. In the sun at its hottest spot, you got Hydrogen atoms going close to the speed of light because of speed. Maybe not OUR sun, but atoms in very hot places are being bounced around in a brownian motion that are close to the speed of light.

At any particular point in time, you can have a Hydrogen atom in one galaxy going 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% the speed of light in exactly the same direction of another Hydrogen atom in another galaxy going just as fast.

The amount of energy it would take to get a hydrogen atom up this speed would rival the entire energy output of a total galaxy.

According to length contraction, from an outsiders point of view, those two hydrogen atoms will be right next to each other, not separated by millions of light years, but right next to each other.

From an outsiders point of view they are millions of light years apart. From their own point of view, they are much further apart. and it is the galaxies that are close together. This brings up the point of Simultaneity again. If particle A is passing through galaxy A at same time as particle B is passing through Galaxy B according to the inhabitant of the Galaxies, then according to the particles, they do not. One particle passes through its galaxy before the other does.

Most of matter is made up of empty space anyways, our bodies are mostly made up of space, even lead is made up of mostly empty space. What makes length contract? Dont know, but solid matter doesn't exist in the universe anyways, so I am guessing that if your traveling in the same direction your part of the same body that can shrink.

Length contracts because it is a measurement, and in SR it is measurements made between frames that have relative motion WRT each other that are effected.

 

[Dropout]

So your saying Planet C is going to hear a totally different radio transmission then Ships A and B.

So planet C's going to hear Ship A say, "Hey B, you experienced time dialation."

And Ship A is going to say to Ship B, "Hey I experienced time dialation."


Only one radio transmission can be transmitted across the universe for all to hear, it may be received slow to some or fast to others, but there can only be one radio transmission.

 

[Chronos]

Dropout, read a book. If you don't understand the question, it is unlikely you will understand the answer.

 

[Dropout]

See, been asking this for years, nobody has an answer. I am not asking whos clocks were running slower at this piont in time, in this guys frame of reference, I am simply asking what did they say to each other when they docked. And the rest of the universe is listening into their conversation.

 

[pervect]

That's not what he's saying at all.

Where did you get the idea that the laws of physics controlled what people said, anyay? That's a very strange idea. At the risk of getting a bit philosophical, the laws of physics control the outcome of experiments that people perform, and what people observe - the laws of physics do not (directly!) control what people say about the results. Unless one views people as a machine - but even then, people-as-machines are so complicated that it is very difficult to predict exactly what they will do or say.


We could spend a lot of time describing what people in the two spaceships saw, but at this point it doesn't seem worth it, because it doesn't seem to me like you're really paying any attention to what people are trying to tell you.

 

[Dropout]

That's not what he's saying at all.

Where did you get the idea that the laws of physics controlled what people said, anyay? That's a very strange idea. At the risk of getting a bit philosophical, the laws of physics control the outcome of experiments that people perform, and what people observe - the laws of physics do not (directly!) control what people say about the results. Unless one views people as a machine - but even then, people-as-machines are so complicated that it is very difficult to predict exactly what they will do or say.


We could spend a lot of time describing what people in the two spaceships saw, but at this point it doesn't seem worth it, because it doesn't seem to me like you're really paying any attention to what people are trying to tell you.

What people are telling me is the special relativity party line I've heard 100 times before. Do people in the ships only communicate with 1 flash of light? I think not, I think they would talk to each other. I am simply asking what Ship A and Ship B said to each other, and what planet C heard they say to each other. Its actually a very simple scenario, exactly like the twin paradox with a 3rd frame of reference thrown in. Is that's what's throwing you all off, a 3rd frame of reference?

The twin paradox works perfectly A-ok when dealing with 2 frames of reference, but can the relativity withstand a 3rd frame of reference? This isn't a complex scenario here, its pretty simple.

 

[JesseM]

What people are telling me is the special relativity party line I've heard 100 times before. Do people in the ships only communicate with 1 flash of light? I think not, I think they would talk to each other. I am simply asking what Ship A and Ship B said to each other, and what planet C heard they say to each other.

When they dock and compare clocks, every single person will hear them say that A's clock is now way behind B's clock, assuming their clocks were synchronized in their own frame before A accelerated.

 

[Dropout]

Colony Ship A and Colony Ship B are 1 light year apart and at rest with each other. They begin radio contact with each other, Colony Ship A accelerates towards Colony Ship B, from zero to the speed of light in under one minute. 1 year later from Colony Ship B's perspective, Colony Ship A decelerates in under 1 minute and docks with the other ship. Colony Ship A says to B, "WOW, you aged 1 year, we only aged a few minutes."


WRONG!

What Colony Ship A and B don't realize is that they are already traveling at the speed of light, and therefore Colony ship A didnt accelerate towards Colony Ship B, it decelerated to ZERO while Colony Ship B continued along its merry way at the speed of light. Planet C sees all this and hears Colony Ship A say on the AM radio, "WOW, you aged 1 year, we only aged a few minutes."



You telling me this ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ isn't a paradox?

 

[Dropout]

When they dock and compare clocks, every single person will hear them say that A's clock is now way behind B's clock, assuming their clocks were synchronized in their own frame before A accelerated.

And A gets on the AM radio and transmits across the universe, "We only aged a few minutes you aged 1 year."

The rest of the universe meanwhile is shaking its head wondering how this is possible since one of the big points about general relativity says that there is no universal speed limit, every universe unto themselves.

 

[JesseM]

Colony Ship A and Colony Ship B are 1 light year apart and at rest with each other. They begin radio contact with each other, Colony Ship A accelerates towards Colony Ship B, from zero to the speed of light in under one minute. 1 year later from Colony Ship B's perspective, Colony Ship A decelerates in under 1 minute and docks with the other ship. Colony Ship A says to B, "WOW, you aged 1 year, we only aged a few minutes."

Ship A doesn't say that he "aged less", he just observes that his clock is behind that of ship B's. This doesn't necessarily mean he aged less, it might just mean that his clock started out being way behind ship B's, then while he was moving towards ship B it began to catch up (because ship B was aging less during that interval), but his clock was still behind ship B's at the moment they met. The question of "who aged less" is meaningless unless they started out at the same point in space and compared ages, then moved around, then reunited to compare ages again. If they didn't start out at the same place, there is no frame-independent way to decide how their ages compared to begin with--different frames disagree about how old A was "at the same time" that B was a given age, because that depends how you define simultaneity. So likewise, there's no frame-independent way to decide who aged less as A approached B if they didn't start out at the same point in space earlier.

 

[Dropout]

If I see your clock is going half as mine, your going to age half as me.

They started out at rest with each other, so they started out at the same frame of reference with each other. Just because they didnt occupy the same space doesn't mean they have the same relative frame of reference. The only matter that occupies the same space are black holes. Just cause they are separated by 1 light year doesn't mean anything.

 

[JesseM]

If I see your clock is going half as mine, your going to age half as me.

But this isn't about the rate the two clocks go (which depends on the reference frame, so the inertial observers B and C will disagree on whether A's clock was going slower than B or vice versa), this is about the time on each clock at the moment they meet. In C's frame, it's B's clock that's going slower, but since A's clock started out way behind B's clock, A's clock is still behind B's clock when they meet. If in my frame your clock starts out reading 5:00 and my clock starts out reading 4:00, and then you travel towards me for an hour while your clock only ticks at half the normal rate, then when we meet my clock will read 5:00 while yours will read 5:30. So, even though you only aged half as much as me (in my frame), my clock is still behind yours.

They started out at rest with each other, so they started out at the same frame of reference with each other.

Sure, they start out in the same frame of reference, but other frames observing them will not agree on their relative ages at the moment before A accelerates, and every frame is equally valid. There can be no absolute, frame-independent truth about who "aged less" unless there is an absolute, frame-independent truth about how their ages compared at some initial time.

 

[wisp]

It is possibe to exlpain what happens using the ether as a reference frame. The ones moving faster through the ether age slower. This avoids all the complications that relativity throws up.