Ok, I see now. In A's frame the clocks didn't all read 0 at the bottom of the diagram. That's where I went wrong. According to A's frame in my diagram, while 0.2 years elapsed on clock C since the flash went off, it "read" 0.3 years when the flash went off. Similarly for clock D, 0.8 years...
Well that may be. I did the problem with L = 1 ly and was quickly trying to generalize. Either way, I'm still confused by the concept of how things can be simultaneous in one frame, but not in another.
Here are my graphs of the events in Minkowski space. The flash bulb is represented by world line B, the two clocks are represented by the world lines C and D. The observer that sees the events as not simultaneous is represented by the world line A. The first diagram is for a frame that is...
I actually specifically left out what would happen with a clock on Earth, because I didn't know. That's why I described a clock adjacent to the ship in Earth's reference frame, which I would assume would only speed up to normal rate.
That's quite alright, you've definitely been a big help. I...
Hi again,
So I'm still relatively new to working with Relativity (no pun intended) and to these forums and I have a question about simultaneity. I have read that simultaneity is broken when events are viewed from different frames. I wasn't quite sure what this meant until I worked out an...
No, it's still traveling at less than c. To the observer on the planet that launched the rocket, the distance between the rocket and the middle planet would appear to be growing faster than c.
You have to use the velocity addition formula to calculate the speed of the rocket with respect to...
If you were on the planet in the middle, the distance between them would appear to grow faster than c. If you were on either of the other planets the distance would appear to grow at less than c.
Traveling at 0.9798c will make you age 10 years while the twin on Earth ages 50.
t_0 = \frac{t}{\gamma}
\gamma = \frac{1}{\sqrt{1-\left(\frac{v}{c}\right)^2}}
t0 is your time, t is Earth time, v is your velocity, c is the speed of light.
I don't really understand this question. As you accelerate to near the speed of light you start to age slower than an observer at rest. So if your twin stays home, and you travel on a rocket at near the speed of light, your twin will be older when you get home.
Einstein's theory of special relativity postulates that light travels at the same rate in all inertial reference frames. If you are on a train going nearly the speed of light with respect to another reference frame, you would still see light in your frame as traveling at the speed of light. In...
Oh, I just made a stupid mistake, haha. I used 12 (B's age) instead of 20 (the time on the axis).
But this diagram still really helped my understanding. The time dilation is only a function of velocity (i.e. when the ship is moving with a constant velocity, A's clock appears to be ticking at...