Saturday, 30 July 2016

special relativity - Does SR treat time and space symmetrically? Then why does $t$ dilate while $ell$ contracts?


Can you resolve this paradox: Time and space are supposed to be treated symmetrically in SR, yet time dilates while length contracts. I've been working on this for weeks, and I can't resolve it.


The mirror experiment shows that time and space both expand for the moving observer, in contradiction to the results one derives from the LT, yet a well-known text, Eisberg's Fundamentals of Modern Physics (pp. 20-21) incorrectly concludes the usual asymmetrical results from that, by changing the definition of time dilation! He defines it as meaning that time measured in the moving frame is longer, when tau is actually well-known to be shorter. Time dilation refers to the mover's time UNITS LOOKING longer to the stationary observer because the total number of time units is FEWER, the opposite situation from the mirror experiment.




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