Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Relativity

Special theory of relativity says, "at speeds closer to that of light, length contracts, mass increases and time dilates." Imagine twins Ram and Rahim on Earth. Ram decides to travel to the nearest star 4.45 light years away in a space ship at a speed which is 86% of the speed of light, while Rahim decides to stay put in his home on Earth. The round trip for Ram will take (4.45*2)/0.86c = 10.28 years (where c is the speed of light). According to special theory of relativity, for those on Earth the ageing of Ram during his trip will be reduced by a factor ε = 0.5 i.e. 0.5* 10.28 = 5.14 years. This means that Rahim will be 10.28 years older when Ram comes back from his trip which took him just 5.14 years! Twins are not twins anymore, thanks to special theory of relativity.

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