On 1/2/2014 8:00 PM, LizR wrote:
On 3 January 2014 15:52, Jason Resch <jasonre...@gmail.com
<mailto:jasonre...@gmail.com>> wrote:
On Thu, Jan 2, 2014 at 9:31 PM, LizR <lizj...@gmail.com
<mailto:lizj...@gmail.com>>
wrote:
Jason,
You may be missing the fact that the acceleration of the space
traveller is what
causes the twin paradox.
I would say it is not so much the acceleration that explains the paradox,
but the
fact that no matter how you rotate the paths, you always see a kink in the
path Pam
takes.
May I venture to suggest this is the same thing :-)
That's not exactly wrong - but it tends to make it confusing. It's like saying a road
from A to B is longer than as-the-crow-flies because of its curves. Yeah, that's true;
but if you want to calculate how much longer you see that the rate of excess distance is
proportional to the first integral of the curvature and so the total excess is the second
integral of the curvature - which is just the distance. So it boils down to unstraight
lines are longer than straight lines. All the specific details of acceleration get
integrated out so it's easy to see that a broken line (infinite accelerations) is just
longer. Or in spacetime, unstraight worldlines are shorter than straight ones. To phrase
it in terms of acceleration misleads people into thinking about the stressful effects of
acceleration and how that could affect a clock,...
Brent
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