Thread: Time Dilation
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Old 29-November-2005, 08:19 PM
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SeanF SeanF is offline
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Join Date: Oct 2001
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Hey, this all looks familiar!

Madman, there's no real paradox in the twin paradox. You're making the same mistake that Sam5 makes in dealing with it, and that is that failing to understand that a single object can experience a change in its own relative motion - that is, not only can one twin be in motion relative to the other, but one twin can be in motion now relative to itself then.

In order for the two twins to get back together, at least one of them has to change its relative motion, and thus symmetry is broken. There's no paradox, in the sense that both twins should expect the other to be younger, because that one twin changing its own relative motion is an absolute, not a relativity.

(How's it going, Sam? Did you ever decide by what factor an accelerating atomic clock should be slowed in GR?)
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