Posted on 03/22/2006 5:34:03 PM PST by KevinDavis
March 22, 2006: Consider a pair of brothers, identical twins. One gets a job as an astronaut and rockets into deep space. The other stays on Earth. When the traveling twin returns home, he discovers he's younger than his brother.
This is Einstein's Twin Paradox, and although it sounds strange, it is absolutely true. The theory of relativity tells us that the faster you travel through space, the slower you travel through time. Rocketing to Alpha Centauri—warp 9, please—is a good way to stay young.
(Excerpt) Read more at science.nasa.gov ...
I hate it when presumed scientists make asinine assertions like this one. Unless the "fact" can be experimentally tested and repeated it is not a fact; hell, it's not even science!
So how can the words "abslutely true" be so carelessly used?
Turning into an alien lizard tends to make your clothes ill-fitting.
That's what they tell me anyway.
Has anyone ever traveled that fast to find out what really happens?
That recent photo of William Shatner looks like he has spent too much time at worp speed and has gained mass.
possibly of interest:
What the Global Positioning System Tells Us about the Twin's Paradox
Tom Van Flandern
http://www.metaresearch.org/cosmology/gravity/gps-twins.asp
"Today, many physicists and students of physics have acquired the impression that these two postulates have been confirmed by observations. However, that is not the case. In fact, none of the eleven independent experiments verifying some aspect of SR [1] is able to verify either postulate. It is now widely believed that no experiment is capable of verifying these postulates even in principle [3], because they become automatically true by convention if one adopts the Einstein clock-synchronization method, and they become just as automatically false if one adopts a different synchronization convention such as the "universal time" postulate of Lorentz."
What the Global Positioning System Tells Us about Relativity
Tom Van Flandern, Univ. of Maryland
http://www.metaresearch.org/cosmology/gps-relativity.asp
"Suppose that the traveling twin is born as his spaceship passes by Earth and both of his on-board clocks are synchronized with clocks on Earth. The natural on-board clock ticks more slowly than the GPS on-board clock because the rates differ by the factor gamma that SR predicts for the slowing of all clocks with relative speed v. [gamma = 1/sqrt(1-v2/c2)] But everywhere the traveling twin goes, as long as his speed relative to the Earth frame does not change, his GPS clock will give identical readings to any Earth-synchronized Earth-frame clock he passes along the way. And his natural clock will read less time elapsed since passing Earth by the factor gamma. His biological processes (including aging), which presumably operate at rates comparable to the ticking of the natural clock, are also slowed by the factor gamma."
from the Bad Astronomy BBS:
AgoraBasta
Senior Member
03-September-2002, 08:05 PM
"For the matters GPS, I tend to believe Van Flandern, no matter how horrible anathema he seems, for a simple reason that he actually participates in the project."
Suppose one could have an erection and take it to outer space and back...or whatever. Deep thoughts, don't you know.
A "frame" in SR consists of a network of local observers at rest with respect to one another, who synchronize their clocks via light signals in straightforward fashion.
If one such frame, or network, is spread out along a straight line, with constant separation between neighbors, and another is spread out along the same line, in the same way, but moving at a steady speed wrt the first frame, the observers in both frames will observe the clocks of the other frame to be running slow, compared to their own physically identical clocks.
Both sets of observers will observe the other frame's clocks not to be synchronized, and both sets of observers will observe the other frame's observers to be closer together than they themselves are.
The whole thing works out mathematically in an exquisite symphony of eighth grade algebra. Such is genius.
I've just always wanted to see that term used in a sentence. Neat!
I did that too. The headline sounded interesting, so I got sucked into this stupid, lame article.
"Didn't Q also send them across a vast gulf of space?"
In Star Trek TNG episode 42, original airdate week of 5/8/89, episode title "Q Who?", Q seeks to join the Enterprise crew. When Picard declines to allow it, Q, in a fit of pique, hurls the Enterprise instantaneously half-way across the galaxy. There, the first encounter takes place with the notorious Borg, and, although eventually Q bails out Picard and his Enterprise crew, the stage is set for subsequent Borg misadventures.
Is faster than light travel possible?
Is it likely that other advanced civilizations exist in the universe?
Is it safe to say that even if intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe, there would no way to ever travel to that planet?
We on Earth are effectively alone in the universe?
Yes, but the Borg did give us seven of nine.
The kinematics of Special Relativity are proved correct by particle accelerators. This is not just a matter of detecting some parts per million or thousand. These particles are accelerated to the "ultrarelativistic limit", which means that they are given kinetic energies which would correspond to velocities many times the speed of light in Newtonian Mechanics.
In this "Ultrarelativistic regime" the formulas of relativistic mechanics are the work-a-day tools, just as clocks and speedometers are for your car trips on the highway.
No.
Is it likely that other advanced civilizations exist in the universe?
I would say yes.
Is it safe to say that even if intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe, there would no way to ever travel to that planet?
If there were one within a few hundred light years, it would not be beyond imagination to travel there, but still at the limits of imagination. Of course, this range includes a tiny fraction of our own galaxy.
We on Earth are effectively alone in the universe?
"I cry to you beyond, upon this bitter air" - Archibald Macleish, Immortal Autumn
Resistance is futile.
What speed velocity would this kind of travel take?
Neat.
I believe the asymmetry lies in the acceleration. Einstein labored over the insight that acceleration, unlike velocity, is not relative; and this went on to be a cornerstone of his General Theory.
In our example, the 'stay at home' brother is the one that, by definition, does not undergo acceleration; the 'traveling' brother does. So, yes, the brothers end up traveling apart (and eventually back toward) relative to each other at high speed, but it's only the traveler who's doing the accelerating.
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