Okay, here's a good mindfuck. Let's establish the setting. You have two mountain peaks about ten miles apart. Located in the valley between the two peaks you have your stationary observer. That observer is watching an object travelling from one peak to another travelling at 99% the speed of light. Now here's the paradox. According to relativity theory within the objects timeframe it would take an instant to cover the distance because of time dilation. However, in the observers time frame it would take a great deal of time for the object to cover that distance, perhaps even days or months. So paradoxically an object which is moving very rapidly would appear to be moving slowly or hardly moving at all to an outside observer. Put that in your pipe and smoke it!
Interesting, I dont quite completely get it but interesting. Could you go into some more detail? Possibly with a picture or somthing to explain it better?
Relativity theory is strange stuff. I didn't even quite get it when I was taking courses on it. But basically the time dilation thing goes like this: For anything moving close to the speed of light time will pass more slowly for it compared to another object that is at a standstill. Se let's you say you have twin brothers. At age 20 one gets on a rocketship and goes flying around the universe at 99 percent the speed of light. The other brother remains on earth where he is relatively not moving in comparison to the speed of the rocketship. When his brother returns he will have aged months or years. The strange thing is that the guy on the rocketship will have only aged by a few weeks. So here is where I find the paradox. If you put this on a smaller scale than the length of the universe, like the distance beween two mountaintops, some strange stuff happens. If the one guy is watching the other guy fly a rocketship travelling the speed of light between the two mountain ranges it will take a great deal of time (from the guy on the ground's viewpoint) for the ship to cover that distance, even though it is travelling close to the speed of light. You would think it would appear to cover it an instance. Weird shit. I'll be the first to admit I don't completely understand it.
seems like one of those science things that they dont understand and theyll change theories on a few times in the next so many years till they find the out how it all really works
You've got it backwards. To the person observing it would appear to be going incredibly fast, to the object itself, it would seem slow. The closer to the speed on light something is going, the slower time becomes.
You got it all wrong. The observer in the valley would "see" (if it were possible) the object travel 10 miles very nearly in an instant. Time dialation would only affect the object that was traveling at 99% of C. The object itself, relative to the valley, would be seen to be moving about 186,188 miles per second.
OK, Several points: 1) this *IS* wierd sh!+. Things work much differently at high speeds than they do at reasonable speeds. If your head doesn't hurt, you're probably not thinking about it correctly. 2) Sycth: Not quite so. Relativity Theory comes in 2 flavors: "Special Relativity" and "General Relativity." This whole discussion fall clearly under Special Relativity. Special relativity has *LOTS* of measurements to support it... for example, your TV wouldn't work if things didn't work that way. General relativity is a beautiful model, but I keep hearing rumblings that maybe experiments don't quite prove it out. The point is: This *particular* paradox doesn't fit what you're saying, although a LOT in science does fit what you said, exactly. 3) It's nearly 3am, so I don't think I'm going to explain this as well as I could, but here are a few more points to add to this mind fu**: - The flying guy's clock will be seen by the "stationary" observer as running very slowly relative to his own, so even though the ground guy's clock will show a short time between mountain peaks, the flying guy's clock will show an even shorter time. Thus, it would seem to the flying guy that he's going even faster, except.... - The flying guy will see the ground distances (in the direction he's travelling) as being shorter than the ground guy sees it. (Length contraction goes along with time dilation!) The distance the flying guy sees between the two mountain peaks will be enough shorter that he'll think he's going past the mountains at exactly the same speed as the ground guy thinks he went past them. They'll just disagree about how long it took, and how far apart they were. - This one is extreemly wierd: "Time" and "Now," whatever they are, is NOT THE SAME for the flying guy as for the ground guy. If the ground guy had remote-control fireworks that he set off at the same, exact instant on both mountain tops, the flying guy would see them as happening at different times! The flying guy would see the fireworks on the mountain he was flying towards as happening well before the one he was flying away from! - The first two points also work in reverse: the flying guy would see the ground guy's clock as running much slower than his own, and the ground guy would see the flying guy as being much shorter, in the direction he was travelling. Under normal thinking, this is the exact reverse of what you'd expect. - For even more fun, check out the "lader paradox": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladder_paradox Have fun stretching your brains!
yes, as thor said, its to do with special and general relativeity. in the end, its really simple, once you accept that time is merely a dimension just like length or width or height. the rate at which you move along this dimension, is relative to the relation between your speed in space, and the speed of time. heres something to bend your mind further: if you actually reach the speed of light, then time would not move, you would be stuck on one point in time. its rather interesting.. that your advancement across the plane of time is determined by your speed.
i read a book that said if you were to travel at 99.999% speed of light on a rocket and go away from earth for 25 years then come back, youl be 25 years older but the earth and everything on it would be over 1000 years older! I think this is how time travel would be possible at all, and i woudnt do it cause you couldnt go back in time only forwards
Here is another fun one. You have two spaceships travelling near the speed of light, you have one observer, and one spacemine toward which the spaceships are traveling and from which they are equidistant. Now let us say that if a spaceship strikes the spacemine it and the ship will be destroyed. From the point of view of the observer, the ships hit the spacemine simulateously and are both destroyed. From the point of view of spaceship A spaceship B gets to the mine first and blows up saving spaceship A. From the point of view of spaceship B the reverse is true. So the poeple on Spaceship A see spaceship B destroyed but are not destroyed themselves. The people on spaceship B see spaceship A destroyed but see themselves as having survived. And the observer see them both blown to bits.
