Dilation Definition and 1000 Threads

I am sure this question is a lot more elementary than a lot of other posts on here - I am definitely a layman rather than a specialist, so I hope this isn't a problem. My hypothetical question is this: Person A is standing directly on earth, looking at his watch (so moving at the same speed...

Hi.. Speedo, flying in space, is at large speed compared to c relative to his brother on earth. Therefore, after a long time meeting at rest relative to each other, Speedo aged less than did his brother from his brother perspective. But from Speedo's point of view, his brother was also moving...

Firstly does a typical massed object surely prone to both kind of time dilations in its lifetime?? Consider 2 cases.. Firstly a person on a heavily massed planet where his time dilation is due to mass of that planet and in other case same person moving at c/2 away from any significant massed...

If you travel at a sufficiently fast speed, then according to relativity, you will age at a slower rate compared to your slower moving contemporaries. This implies that biological functions (say, of a person) and mechanical functions (say, of a machine) are literally functioning at a slower...

Hi, I am new to this forum, and I wish I get some help here. I really can't find any solution to this paradox; I am going to deny all the special theory of relativity because of this. The paradox is very simple, here it is: Consider two persons sitting on two adjacent trains at rest...

Hello When we try to find a formula for time dilation, we think of a situation where the velocity of the other frame is perpendicular to the velocity of the light (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilation) Why is this? I know if we try any other direction there is length contraction...

Hi, I am having a hard time understanding one thing about this experiment for Time Dilation. I have one observer on a moving train measuring the time it takes for light to travel a distance d and be reflected back and one observer who is stationary, watching the same events. I understand the...

If I wanted to figure out the gravitational time dilation at different points in a the field around earth, could I just use v=gt. and find the speed that I would be moving if I went into free-fall from point x to point y. To figure out the time difference between x and y? and the t in v=gt...

Consider a massive object moving close to the speed of light. Imagine it travels close to a black hole, but does not enter the black hole. How do you calculate the exact time dilation experienced by the massive object's reference frame? How does time dilation due to movement stack with...

Imagine there is a train moving at .9c with a person on the train and an observer on a platform watching the train go by. The person on the train walks forward while shining a flashlight. To the observer on the platform, the person on the train is time dilated and walks forward in "slow...

Question: Why is the Bailey et. al. (1977) muon storage ring experiment not considered a refutation of GR, rather than being a corroboration of SR theory? It seems to establish that only velocity is the cause of time dilation, and the very high acceleration (order of 10^18g) plays no part in...

i just started studying special theory of relativity and am confused a lot. its first consequence,that is moving clocks run slow confuses me a lot. if two events happen then the time difference between them as measured by a clock in a frame moving at .9c would be lesser than the time measured by...

This is something that interested me after reading about time dilation. For the point of making it simpler, ignore relativity relating to gravitational fields Lets say for example, that the Earth does not orbit the sun, and the solar system doesn't orbit within the galaxy etc (makes it easier...

A spaceship with an arbitrarily large quantity of fuel cells departs Earth and accelerates away from it with a fixed trajectory until it reaches .9c. It continues to accelerate, but never reaches c because that is impossible for any object with mass. From the frame of reference of the crew...

I know that a black hole creates infinite curvature in spacetime and hence infinite time dilation. I was wondering though, if I could think of this stopping of time due to the fact that a light ray moving radially towards the centre of a black hole would have to travel infinitely far along the...

We all know that in general relativity, there is the idea that the gravitational force and accelerating reference frames are very closely related. In GR, gravity acts through distortions of the space-time continuum, which causes phenomena such as redshift and time dilation. My question is this...

Lets say I have 2 elevators And I have the same experiment in both. Now the first elevator goes into free fall in a constant gravitational field. Now a little bit later the second elevator goes into free fall. Now as the second elevator goes into free fall its wave function is the same as the...

New here, guys. I anterospectively appreciate your patience with me. I am neither a professional physicist nor even a student (at least not formally) of physics. However, after some perusing I just now understand the rudiments of special and, I think, general relativity. And, like a child...

My knowledge toward physics stay on high school level, and all i know about relativity are from wiki, so please make the explanation simple~ In wiki, it said it is possible and logical that B's time runs slower relative to A while A's time runs slower to B. But i still can't understand how...

I have a light clock onboard a spacecraft moving past the Earth parallel to an observer. The lightclock measures the time it takes for light waves to bounce between two mirriors. I have two sets of mirriors, one on the vertical axis perpendicular to the direction of travel and also a...

First post on PF! Anyways, I'm a high school student so please forgive my lack of knowledge in some areas :) So I was reading about special relativity and I understand the ideas behind both postulates. It's the application of those postulates that confuses me. For example, please let me...

Hi, I have attempted the following questions but I am unsure of my answers/method. Could you guys please help me through? A super fast spacecraft is moving at a speed of 0.80c with respect to the observers on Earth. The spacecraft leaves Earth in May 2004 on its way to a distant solar...

Ok I have attached a picture of what I am talking about. A, B, C, represent people with clocks. And A is at rest with respect to the middle of the planet. A, B , C all synchronize their clocks . Then B and C start to orbit around the planet with the same speed but in opposite directions...

Hi all. I'm having trouble getting an intuitive understanding for the following situation. Let frame A and frame B be moving with relative velocity v. It's true that a clock in frame A will be time dilated with respect to a clock in frame B, but also that a clock in frame B will be time...

Let's say I start out a few thousand kilometers from a black hole, and I begin to move toward the black hole due to it's gravitational pull. What type of time dilation would I experience as I fell into the black hole before the event horizon, and after the event horizon? By the time I die...

In the case where you have a photonic clock bouncing a photon between 2 mirrors, if the mirrors are alligned on the vertical axis, bouncing the photon up and down and the overall clock traveling along the horizontal axis, then the whole thing makes sense to me. However, if you were to rotate the...

If a simulated universe works on einstein relativity would the real world have ... ...To work on relativity? I think the maximum speed of the universe between real and simulated universe could vary but would time dilation still exist in both? And just for myself time dilation is when...

As according to formula: t=t"/(1-u2/c2) If we travel at speed c will time for stationary observer amount to infinity?

I have red that as an object approaches a black hole, to an observer the object never appears to pass the event horizon because of time dilation. If so why does the hole appear black, wouldn't the same thing happen to the light, and wouldn't it spread over the surface of the black hole...

I was watching a cartoon with my niece. Most of the time, cartoons have fairly simple things like 1+1=2 and so on. But this time I saw an equation that looks rather complex. I made a thread before about this, and tons of people replied. If I can tell by what's visible, it's an...

Should I think of gravity/"time dilation" as directional? Imagine this scenario, a photon skirts across the near edge of some highly massive object's gravitational field. If I imagine that field as a sphere, its near edge might be a section defined by height, width, and length, each with...

Hey guys The lab manual for the class is found here http://advancedlab.physics.gatech.edu/labs/Muons/Muons.pdf One of the things, I was interested in figuring out was what would be the minimum height needed to put a moun detector (currently at ground level) in order to detect a minimum 1%...

Hi All. I have a little bit of a strange question I'm trying to figure out. If a human body was undergoing time dilation relative to another object, we believe that their brain, and therefore mind would slow down along with the rest of their body, correct? If this is so, and light...

Hello Forum, if one observer A is at rest, its clock measures proper time. Observer A could look at the clock on a spacecraft moving at a large fraction of the speed of light and see that the clock on the spacecraft ticks more slowly, leading to time dilation... To look at that clock in...

OK, I've found a great explanation of the derivation of the Lorentz transformation, with x' = γ [ x - v t ] t' = γ [ t - ( v / c2 ) x ] so if I take the other term as 0, there is x'( t = 0 ) = γ x t'( x = 0 ) = γ t but the problem is that the time dilation & length...

Mass dilation would of course be the relativistic mass (a term which really shouldn't be used.) It seems none of the books or websites I have researched have explained this to my satisfaction, so I began thinking about this, and here is my derivation. NOTE: IRF = Inertial Reference Frame...

I have a question relating to relativistic time dilation and thermodynamics. I have put the question in the context of a thought experiment. This I have done as I can not find the particular terminology needed to ask a more succinct question. I have also taken some liberty to try to make the...

Hey everyone, I've searched the threads for an answer to my question but came up short. Basically what I want to know is how does time dilation relate to the twin paradox. I'm a newb to relativity and just started reading about it last night. I hit this bump and I'm trying to get over it...

Let's say we have two objects in space, far from any gravitational source. In each "object", there's an observer, and a clock. Each observer is constantly looking at both clocks(his and the other object's). Now, for observer A, observer B is moving at 0.9c, and for observer B it's the exact...

hi sorry about my english. i am from france. i have a few questions about the image i have found in my schoolbook that i attached to this post. there is a light signal moving up and down and each time it reaches the upper mirror this is somehow detected. there are also two observers: one...

Say we had two different civilisations in two different galaxies and an observer in a neutral area of space between the two. We are going to have a race to see which civilisation can develop technology the fastest and reach the observer before the other, both are of the same species and have...

I was listening to a lecture about the expansion of the universe and found myself confused about the light we see from very distant galaxies. These galaxies are red shifted because they are moving away from us and the photons are being stretched. Does this mean that the galaxy will appear to...

If I am in free-fall and then I throw a clock above me so that it is moving away from me at a constant speed, can I just use regular time dilation to see how time is flowing in the clocks frame relative to my frame? Or do I need to worry about gravitational time dilation.

hi i have some troubles to understand something properly: if oberserver A is not moving in his inertial frame and there is some observer B moving relatively to oberserver A with velocity V, then this observer B will measure a different(shorter) time from the one that is measured by observer A...

Homework Statement We observe a spaceship moving away from the Earth at a velocity of v = 0.866c. The spaceship emits two light signals, the second one 4 seconds (Delta T') after the first one (measured on board). What is the time interval (Delta T) between the arrival of the two light signals...

All, I am having a problem resolving the common examples that are used to explain time dilation as a consequence of the constancy of the speed of light. I can't help but assume that there is something simple and fundamental that I'm missing here. I apologize in advance for forcing you to use...

Hello Friends, Consider a Linear accelerator, at the one end there is a Muon Generator, and it produces a certain amount of Mouns, let's say 'x'. These Muons are accelerated to the other End of the accelerator, where the number of Muons reached are detected and displayed on a Digital display...

I've read that time and space dilate under acceleration to ensure the constant speed of light. I'm having trouble visualizing a scenario that illustrates this concept. Could someone please explain this to me? Thanks.

I need some help to answer a question as my physics background, while self taught, still has some holes both from following only specifics and gaps since studying it. The question is below. "is there a reputable function for the effect of time dilation in special relativity or is just...

I have a few questions about time dilation and how it accumulates. 1a. Say you have a situation where you have two clocks that move away from each other with symmetrical acceleration and relative motion. From what I understand, each clock would appear to have slowed down relative to the...