- #1
Simi
- 24
- 3
Hello everyone, this is my first post on this forum, I am a new member and the other day was pondering on a question related to the passage of time. So, I have the following thought experiment:
Suppose there is the following setup:
We have two small toy cars, identical, each capable of traveling with a maximum speed of 1 km/h.
We place one car on Earth and the other one on a spaceship. That spaceship is capable of traveling at 99% the speed of Light.
The moment the spaceship starts moving, away from Earth (it has an instant acceleration to 99% the speed of light), both of the toy cars also start moving as well. One of them will move on Earth, and the other inside the spaceship.
After half an hour, the spaceship turns around and travels back to Earth, to the same position it started. When it arrives back to the starting position, after 1 hour, the small toy car on Earth has traveled exactly 1 km.
The question is, how much did the toy car from the spaceship traveled?
I'm not looking for an exact answer, rather to know if it has traveled the same distance as the car on Earth (1 km) or a shorter distance?
PS: Time of travel is measured with a clock found on Earth.
Suppose there is the following setup:
We have two small toy cars, identical, each capable of traveling with a maximum speed of 1 km/h.
We place one car on Earth and the other one on a spaceship. That spaceship is capable of traveling at 99% the speed of Light.
The moment the spaceship starts moving, away from Earth (it has an instant acceleration to 99% the speed of light), both of the toy cars also start moving as well. One of them will move on Earth, and the other inside the spaceship.
After half an hour, the spaceship turns around and travels back to Earth, to the same position it started. When it arrives back to the starting position, after 1 hour, the small toy car on Earth has traveled exactly 1 km.
The question is, how much did the toy car from the spaceship traveled?
I'm not looking for an exact answer, rather to know if it has traveled the same distance as the car on Earth (1 km) or a shorter distance?
PS: Time of travel is measured with a clock found on Earth.