Hi
Intriguing question.. being fresh of readings (Greene- "The fabric of the cosmos") I would answer that , according to the special relativity theory, the totality of the spacetime stands still, and the relative motions between A and B depicted above are merely a shift of viewpoint.
The universe have absolute coordinates: respect to the whole universe A is actually moving, while B does not; or better while B's motion is 100% through time, "A" subtracts his motion trough space from his motion through time, thus dilating it. Brought to the limit, as A approaches to the light speed, the time for him relents until it nearly stops, and he would see B's watch run faster and faster.
It's not only theory: at least an experiment was made and proved that the time dilation really exists: two twin atomic clocks, one at the ground and one flying on a jet. At the arrival, the clock on the jet was some infinitesimal fraction of time late respect to the other.
Hope it makes sense, I'm not a pro, in physics as in chess!
Cheers
Iacopo
Hi guys, I've been reading your posts on all sorts of things and it seems that I have joined a group with pretty good knowledge on all sorts of topics. Pleasant change! Here is my question
According to special relativity, which deals with uniform motion ( yes, I know it can deal with accelearation but uniform motion is what I want to talk about here) states that person "A" can consider himself a rest with respect to person "B" and person "B" can consider himself at rest with respect to person "A" as long as they stay in uniform motion.
If A and B have identical light clocks and are separated by some distance, say A in space and B on the Earth, and A is traveling at a uniform speed, then B, on the Earth, could say that it is he who is moving and not A. OK so far so good?
Lets say that A is moving at some speed with respect to B. B now measures the rate at which A's clock is now "ticking" he finds that it has slowed down with respect to his own identical clock. (If you decided to input any speed into the equations it will not matter what speed you input, as long as it is less than the speed of light.) So lets say that B finds out that A's clock is half as slow as his own clock. This would then be an indication of time dilation. BUT, lets now say that A decided to say that it was he who is at rest with respect to B and decides to measure B's clock with respect to his own. He finds that B's clock is "ticking" half as slow as his own clock! As far as I can tell both clocks are "ticking" at the same rate. If this is true that both clocks are ticking at the same rate then where is the time dilation?
If you need me to rephrase anything just let me know.
Thanks for reading.
Red