Back to Home

Blackholes2 Forum Message

Forums: Atm · Astrophotography · Blackholes · Blackholes2 · CCD · Celestron · Domes · Education
Eyepieces · Meade · Misc. · God and Science · SETI · Software · UFO · XEphem
RSS Button

Home | Discussion Forums | Blackholes II | Post
Login

Be the first pioneers to continue the Astronomy Discussions at our new Astronomy meeting place...
The Space and Astronomy Agora
Re: Absolute Time

Forum List | Follow Ups | Post Message | Back to Thread Topics | In Response To
Posted by Zephram Cochrane/">Zephram Cochrane on December 17, 1999 21:14:45 UTC

: I have been looking at the theory of realitivity and was wondering about the idea, that as an object is traveling at or near the speed of light, or is accelerated (a force acting on the object apears to be arbitrary) at or near the speed of light an observer will observe the time of the object slow down. I dont think this is right though. Given a person (person A) in a space that has no sides, celling or floor, and another person(person B) is traveling at or near the speed of light(for the rest of the story I will refer to this speed as "speed C" in order to not type repetitive information) in the same space. Each person has a clock. Person A observes person B traveling at speed C an acording to Einestin's theory, Person A will see person B's clock to fall behind his own. Acording to realitivity, person B will see person A travel at speed C realitive to himself, hence he will expirience person A's clock to fall behind his own. Now, when the two clocks are brought next to each other, they will have to bee the same. I am not sure how this applies, and I would be very thankfull for any help on clearing this up.

In order to bring the clocks back together, one or both of the clocks must undergo acceleration. Lets say clock A is left alone and a force is applied to clock B to accelerate its motion back toward clock A. During this acceleration the observer carrying clock B no longer observes clock a to be running slower, but instead observed an increased rate of clock A. This can be understood in a few ways, the simplest is to realize that the accelerated frame of B can be considered to be a transition between different inertial frames which each have different standards for simultaneity. In this scenario when the two clocks are brought back together clock A will have more time clocked than clock B. If instead of applying the force to B you applied it to A then B would have more time recorded than A. If they were pushed symmetrically then they read the same time when back together. This is why it is said that a space traveler traveling near light speeds could go to another star and back in what would be a few minutes although by the time the ship arrived back at earth many years would have gone by for those on earth.

Follow Ups:

Login to Post
Additional Information
Google
 
Web www.astronomy.net
DayNightLine
About Astronomy Net | Advertise on Astronomy Net | Contact & Comments | Privacy Policy
Unless otherwise specified, web site content Copyright 1994-2024 John Huggins All Rights Reserved
Forum posts are Copyright their authors as specified in the heading above the post.
"dbHTML," "AstroGuide," "ASTRONOMY.NET" & "VA.NET"
are trademarks of John Huggins