Recent content by nwall

The answer is that time dilation does happen from both frames of reference. The twin on Earth is justified in saying that the twin in the spaceship's clock is moving slower, and, at the same time, the twin in the spaceship is justified in saying the twin on the Earth's clock is moving slower...

I must have misunderstood your question. I apologize.

pandoras box :confused:

Let me take a stab at providing a suitable explanation. If you are only thinking in terms of time dilation and length contraction, then, no, relativity makes absolutely no sense. The "third factor" which you are searching for, as has been pointed out by others (although not plainly), is what...

To elaborate on Gale's reply, the conclusion Hawking came to was that we will always experience time in the same direction that entropy increases because our brains become more ordered by creating disorder in the universe. He gives the example of a computer because we know how they work much...

- Albert Einstein, Relativity: The Special and General Theory, Section 23 I'm confused about how gravity could account for all of the observations of the observer on the rotating disc. If the observer dropped a ball, he would see it fall away from the disc initially, as expected if there was...

This was only true for the special theory of relativity; the general theory of relativity got rid of the need to make the distinction between an accelerating body and a body in uniform motion. Both can be said to be at rest: - Albert Einstein, Relativity: The Special and General Theory...

"Proper length" is the term used for a body's invariant length. Although a body's length will change with respect to an observer, it does have a proper length, and that is a body's length with respect to itself, or its length when at rest. For example, if you lay down on a spaceship going at...

That's not true. A wormhole is a connection between two different points in time just as much as it is a connection between two different points in space.

He did, but that was the general theory of relativity. The classical twins paradox only cares about the special theory of relativity. There are two main points Einstein's special theory of relativity makes: 1) Velocity affects the rate of time. 2) Velocity affects the order of time. The...

If you live in the US then it always seems to be christians because 80% of US citizens identify themselves as christians. Why does it always seem christians are the ones buying fries from McDonalds?

There are two ways to answer this: 1) There is no such thing as "sitting still". 2) You are always "sitting still". The second is really the most accurate way to say it. According to the general principle of relativity, "All Gaussian co-ordinate systems are essentially equivalent for the...

Well, I'm not sure if Newton himself had a theory of what light would do when exposed to a gravitational field, but apparently Newton's equations predicted that light would bend in a gravitational field based on the knowledge of light in the 1900s. Remember that Galileo observed that the...

Yeah, I was confused about that too, but here it is, straight from the horse's mouth: - Einstein, Relativity: The Special and General Theory, Appendix Three: The Experimental Confirmation of the General Theory of Relativity

Unless of course you're Einstein. :wink: A lot of his work on GR wasn't based on observations but predicted later observations.