Time Dilation and Twin Paradox Revisited

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Thomas</i>
<br />I have just put a webpage online which contains a 'Twin Paradox' thought experiment where the paradox can not be resolved in terms of the usual 'asymmetry' argument that one of the twins is not permanently in an inertial reference frame.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Most people do not understand SR, and that includes most relativists. There must be over 100 books that "solve" the twin's paradox, and the majority of them are wrong. Many disputers such as Thomas conclude that they have found a flaw in SR when they have only found a flaw in the writings of someone who does not understand SR.

What is now known about SR is that it is an internally consistent mathematical theory that cannot be contradicted by thought experiments. Given the two postulates of SR (which are untestable), its conclusions do follow despite being highly non-intuitive. In an early MRB issue, I published a symmetric version of the twin's paradox, and later discovered that others had already covered that ground.

For Thomas or anyone who wants to understand the twin's paradox from an SR perspective, and to fully appreciate why Thomas's objections are not applicable to SR (they presume the existence of a universal instant of "now" instead of frame-dependent time), see metaresearch.org/cosmology/gravity/gps-twins.asp at this web site.

For those interested in understanding nature, SR is now falsified in favor of LR, and the latter has no twin's paradox because it recognizes a preferred frame and a lack of symmetry. See metaresearch.org/cosmology/gravity/speed_limit.asp at this web site, which was eventually published as “Experimental Repeal of the Speed Limit for Gravitational, Electrodynamic, and Quantum Field Interactions”, T. Van Flandern and J.P. Vigier, Found.Phys. 32(#7), 1031-1068 (2002). -|Tom|-

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by tvanflandern</i>
Many disputers such as Thomas conclude that they have found a flaw in SR when they have only found a flaw in the writings of someone who does not understand SR.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">The two things are obviously identical as far as the writer Einstein is concerned.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">What is now known about SR is that it is an internally consistent mathematical theory<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">It is about as consistent as stealing some goods in a shop and then claiming it is not illegal because the goods are actually yours (which you know they are not). Yes, the story would formally be consistent with a legal behaviour, but I don't think it would convince the police.
In case of the Lorentz transformation in SR the situation is quite similar (as already indicated above): in his derivation of the Lorentz transformation, Einstein illegally uses a vectorial velocity addition for light signals, then discovers that this leads to a non-constant speed of light and suggests as a remedy that the original definitions of the length and time scales should be changed by a certain factor (contradicting therefore his original definitions).
As indicated on my webpage www.physicsmyths.org.uk/lightspeed.htm , the solution to this problem caused by the constancy of the 'speed of light' is to use a different definition of the notion 'speed' for light signals but not for the length and time units (which are fixed by definition). Basically, the travel time is given by the value for the 'speed' of light and the distance between source and receiver *at the time of emission * of the light signal; this is the only way the travel time of the signal can be made independent of any movement of the light source (this definition for the 'speed' of light could for instance explain the anomalous acceleration observed for the Pioneer spacecraft as with the traditional definition for the speed of light one underestimates the distance of the spacecraft by an amount corresponding to the distance the spacecraft travels during the time it takes the signal to reach the earth).

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">For those interested in understanding nature, SR is now falsified in favor of LR, and the latter has no twin's paradox because it recognizes a preferred frame and a lack of symmetry. <hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">The thought experiment shown in www.physicsmyths.org.uk/imgs/timedilation.gif does not try to resolve the Twin Paradox, but, on the contrary, shows that it can not be resolved i.e. a time dilation is logically impossible (I have outlined above why the flawed conclusion of a time dilation was reached in the first place).

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As I said, for those interested in understanding SR as the knowledgable relativists understand it, that is now possible. You have made it clear that you have no interest in achieving such an understanding, but prefer to stand in line as the 1001st person to write about "Einstein's error". You will be waiting there for a very long time because non-relativists don't care and relativists are tired of trying to teach SR to everyone who does not "get it". -|Tom|-

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by tvanflandern</i>
<br />prefer to stand in line as the 1001st person to write about "Einstein's error". You will be waiting there for a very long time because non-relativists don't care and relativists are tired of trying to teach SR to everyone who does not "get it". -|Tom|-
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
You can't really blame me if the 1000 persons before me failed to see the actual flaw in SR and instead actually worked into the hands of Relativists with their equally flawed criticism. But anyway, 'being tired' is certainly not an acceptable argument to terminate a scientific discussion.

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www.physicsmyths.org.uk
www.plasmaphysics.org.uk

Mr Van Flandern has been flogging his false opinion for a long time that critics of special relativity are uninformed. I have tired of trying to convince him of his error. I am offering to provide a detailed proof that Einstein is wrong to anyone who requests this by sending me an eMail so that I can reply via a word file. My eMail is kc3mx@yahoo.com. My paper provides a detailed proof that Einstein is wrong. Also I can provide papers which detail all of the mistakes and errors in his papers and in the numerous textbooks that present incorrect and invalid proofs of relativity.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by kc3mx</i>
<br />My paper provides a detailed proof that Einstein is wrong.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Make that #1002. [}] -|Tom|-