View Single Post
  #2 (permalink)  
Old 04-December-2003, 09:36 AM
Diamond Diamond is offline
Established Member
 
Join Date: Jun 2003
Posts: 468
Default

Erm. Not quite.

There is the Twin Paradox which is due to SR and involves no acceleration at all see http://www.hawaii.edu/suremath/SRtwinParadox.html

Then there is the issue of acceleration and the equivalence with gravity which is a postulate of GR.

What needs to be remembered in the example above is that each twin travels a different "world-line" through spacetime. The Paul twin undergoes two accelerations and two decelerations. The Peter twin undergoes one acceleration. The two are moving through different world-lines and therefore there will be a time dilation effect due to acceleration as well as motion near light speed relative to the inertial frame.