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One of the tricky concepts to envision in space travel is that of the slowing clock in relativistic time dilation. One of the east ways to "see" it is a swimmer swimming laps in a calm lake. A large floating fence of pontoons confines the swimmer (swimming at a constant speed ). Every lap, over and back, constitutes one second...or invent your own unit.
Now, you hitch up a motorboat, and begin dragging the pontoon fence slowly...at a constant speed, perpendicular to the swimmer's initial motion....across the lake. The swimmer must now angle (her,his) motion to accomodate the moving target of the far pontoon. The longer, more diagonal path takes more time.....the faster the motorboat speed, the longer to tick off another second.....hence time is dilated. An analogous effect occurs for two initially parallel mirrors, and a bouncing light ray. In a moving spaceship, they must be angled to produce a diagonal path....like the swimmer....and hence a moving, bouncing light beam clock slows down...or is time dilated....and hence all biological processes are too. Since the light beam is far faster than the swimmer...correspondingly large speeds are required for a substantial effect, here. That's relativistic time dilation in a nutshell...pictorially. Ciao.Pete |
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ZaphodBeeblebrox.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Not Only That, BUT, If The Motorboat, Drags the Pontoon, at The Same Speed, The Swimmer Swims, (s)he, Moves No Where, er, Fast! The Really, Creepy Part, Is The Implications for Photons ... They All Move, at The Speed of Light, Provided they Are, In a Vacuum; So Therefore, They Are All, Immortal!!! But, the Special Theory prevents the massive spaceship from ever quite attaining the identical velocity of the massless photons....so the best you can do is have a very SSSLLLLOOOOWWWWW....clock. Not quite immortal. Einstein's Twin paradox is true. Quote: if you ignore your Conservation Laws, they too will disappear. Ciao. Pete |
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