Re: Living in a world with high speeds

john_doe_ph_d@xxxxxxxxx:
>We are told that relativity is hard to grasp because we live in a world
>where we travel at speeds << c.

Actually, relativity might be counter-intuitive for that reason,
but it's not hard to grasp.

>Supposedly, if speeds that are a
>significant fraction of c were common, then relativistic effects such
>as time dilation and length contraction would be intuitive to us.
>
>I am wondering, however, how such a world could function. For one

Probably not very well and the fact that living organisms don't
extend over intergalactic distances is some evidence that it
wouldn't work very well. On the other hand, so long as you
aren't assuming that living organisms are so large that it takes
a long time for signals to propoagate across the organism, such a
world exists. Just ask an astronomer.

>thing, there's the well-known example (twin paradox) where, say, a
>parent would go on a space voyage and upon his return be younger than
>his children. Think of the social consequences of such effects.
>
>As a more mundane example, since everyone would have his or her own
>time, how could a group of people decide to have a meeting at a
>specific time? If the time is referenced to a particular frame,
>everyone would have to keep a detailed record of their motion (speeds,
>times, accelerations) in order to be able to calculate the
>corresponding time in their own frame of reference.

Why is that? How often have you heard the term ``let's synchronize
watches?''

>Am I missing something, or would such a world be quite chaotic?



.

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