Re: Question about time dilation
- From: dlzc <dlzc1@xxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 29 Nov 2007 07:22:53 -0800 (PST)
Dear LuckyE:
You have a good response by "harry".
On Nov 29, 1:20 am, LuckyE <D.Luck...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi,
I have another question, I was reading up a bit on
time dilation and since my knowledge of relativity
is limited I was wondering something.
I read there's both inertial time dilation by a
speed difference between two objects and
gravitational time dilation, and although I can get
the gravitational part.
The inertial time dilation doesn't make a whole lot
of sense to me. If two objects are moving at
different speeds relative from each other, then how
can either one know which is the one moving?
They can't, unless they each make a third observation... the Universe
at large.
For all they know they're moving at the same speed
away/towards each other.
Yes.
Wouldn't it make more sense if there's only
gravitational time dilation? (or by acceleration,
but I assume this is the same?)
Close enough to the same. But the time dilation due to differential
motion can be expressed with no acceleration whatsoever between
setting of clocks, if you have three clocks.
"Sense" as you would expect of Nature, was trained on a world where c
was very close to infinity. If you want to know more, you need to
train your "sense" what it is like at speeds where c is truly finite.
As a fairly poor analogy, consider two people that go between your
house and the closest store and back home again. Is it reasonable to
expect both persons to take the exact same amount of time to make the
trip, even though they could take different paths? Different inertial
histories result in different "elapsed times", with the person that
doesn't travel at all having the maximum time duration, and the moving
person having the maximum space "duration". Does that help?
David A. Smith
.
- References:
- Question about time dilation
- From: LuckyE
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