Re: Time Dilation Mistakes

From: Androcles (Androcles_at_)
Date: 02/11/05 

Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2005 14:23:04 GMT

"Picti" <amcneish@swbell.net> wrote in message
news:1108128052.998571.274830@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> Isn't the paradox in the twins paradox to do with who is moving? If
> twin A is moving away from twin B, isn't it equally valid to imagine
> that it's really twin B moving away from twin A. In the first B is
> aging faster than A but in the second A is aging faster than B, thus
> the paradox.

That's pretty much it, yes. What we have is a denial of the PoR,
which Einstein gives an example of at the opening of his 1905 paper:

"It is known that Maxwell's electrodynamics--as usually understood at
the present time--when applied to moving bodies, leads to asymmetries
which do not appear to be inherent in the phenomena. Take, for example,
the reciprocal electrodynamic action of a magnet and a conductor. The
observable phenomenon here depends only on the relative motion of the
conductor and the magnet, whereas the customary view draws a sharp
distinction between the two cases in which either the one or the other
of these bodies is in motion. For if the magnet is in motion and the
conductor at rest, there arises in the neighbourhood of the magnet an
electric field with a certain definite energy, producing a current at
the places where parts of the conductor are situated. But if the magnet
is stationary and the conductor in motion, no electric field arises in
the neighbourhood of the magnet. In the conductor, however, we find an
electromotive force, to which in itself there is no corresponding
energy, but which gives rise--assuming equality of relative motion in
the two cases discussed--to electric currents of the same path and
intensity as those produced by the electric forces in the former case."

Essentially, if the traveled "twin" is the magnet, a lesser current
would be induced in the conductor than if the conductor did the
traveling and the magnet stayed at home. Einstein failed to resolve the
issue. He knew it in 1920, 15 years later, when he devoted a chapter to
it,

 http://www.bartleby.com/173/7.html

 where he appeals to schoolchildren and puff- puff trains, which is
pathetic really.

 He says:

"Prominent theoretical physicists were therefore more inclined to reject
the principle of relativity, in spite of the fact that no empirical data
had been found which were contradictory to this principle."

The prominent physicists, men like Bohr, Planck, and Michelson were not
quite so inclined as he claimed them to be.

Androcles.

 

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