I do not understand Einsteins special theory of relativity?

Question

well i think his special theory of relativity is something like the faster to the speed of light u go, the slower time will go, if i'm wrong please correct me but if im right can u explain in simple words how this is possible?

Answer 1

Ah, Time Dilation. A difficult concept. Open your mind for a moment and you will see.

Mass = Energy.

The ammount of Energy in a system governs the Gravitiational field it creates.

Or how much Mass it has, since they are the same thing.


Now, something happens when you begin to go faster. Your system gains energy. Why you ask? Because in order to move in the first place, you must defeat the forces of nature. Indeed, each time you do so you are crushing them, defeating them at their own game.

But in doing so your system requires that you gain more energy. If your energy is not enough to beat the forces at work, you lose and cannot move. Does that make sense? You can't push a 100000 pound rock by yourself because you don't have enough energy!


The same applys to speeding through space. As your speed increases, the forces of nature start pushing back harder and harder. Relentlessly....as you go faster you put more energy into the system and nature pushes back with an equal force. In order to go faster, you must apply more energy.


Einstein noted something funny. In order for a system of Mass, like ourselves, to travel at lightspeed, we must have INFINITE ENERGY. This is governed by what light is, light is essentially photons, or pure energy. It has no mass. In order for you to reach the speed of light, you must BECOME LIGHT! This is not like the sound barrier. The light barrier is an ENERGY barrier, and in order to reach it you must have infinite energy in your system, making breaking the speed of light impossible.



Now for time dilation. As you can see, if it requires infinite energy to reach lightspeed, as you go faster, your energy approaches infinity, does it not? Yes it does, and Einstein simply noted that Time Dilation is exponential, as one goes faster, the ammount of energy required to go faster increases exponentially.



Now back to mass and energy. Energy in a system creates gravity.

Gravity IS a bend in space time. Gravitons pull objects because mass within the relm of space bends space such that objects want to fall in towards it. You can also note from this that if you are bending space, you are essentially changing position relative to something else.


This is an odd concept, but here we go. Time is perceived as the same for me and you because we are on the same Gravitational field intensity, and thus on the same level in space time. However, when you change position in the fabric of space time, time starts to flow differently for you because your position has changed.

For example, if you would picture a black hole for a minute. If I layed a sheet of paper flat, you can imagine a black hole creating a hole in the center of the paper, bending it downwards essentially forever. If you get close to it, you're going to fall in, and since the bend in space is so great, it creates a lot of gravity.

And as you enter this hole, your position in space changes, and time starts to pass differently for you.


And therefore we arrive at this. As your speed increases, you gain energy, and your position in space changes such that time passes FASTER for someone that is observing you or outside your gravitational field, and inside of your field time is passing much slower. But to you it remains the same because you are inside your own field.

But if you were to look outside of your field, you would observe things passing much FASTER. For example, if you could see a giant clock near the speed of light, it would spin incredibly fast, years would pass instantly. If someone could see inside your field however, and you held a clock, this clock would appear to not be moving.

This is because someone observing you from outside is NOT in the same position in space time. You have essentially bend space so that you are bending the dimension of TIME itself, and therefore changing how it is perceived.

So remember: As you gain energy you bend space, and time inside your ship goes much slower than it does outside the ship.

PS: A funny concept: You Dilate time when you move, no matter what the movement is. Yes, moving a lot causes you to pass through time slower ;) But since the scale is exponential, you don't move fast enough for anyone to notice you're dilating time.


Holy **** that was really long. Hopefully it makes a lot more sense. If it doesn't then BLAH LOL BECAUSE IM GOING TO BED!!

Answer 2

If you turn on a laser pointer while moving close to the speed of light and mearsure that speed you will get C. No matter how fast you move so long as it is less than C you will always get C (the speed of light - aprox 300Km per second)

Now an obersver at rest will also see your laser pointer and measure the speed at C too! But the laser pointer's color will not be the same. If the space traveler with the laser pointer is coming towards you it will be shifted to a shorter wave length (like red to blue) if the space traveler is moving away from you the frequency will be longer ( a red shift). The only value that can be changed to accomadate this shift is TIME.

The space traveler is in a different time reference than an observer who is stationary. The space traveler's clock will appear to the observer to be moving more slowly than his own clock.

Hope this helps, Cheers

Answer 3

I'm not sure i understand it either but i'll try to give it a shot at explaining how its suppose to work. Say you are out in outer space and you are traveling at the speed of light. Because you are going so fast you are aging very very slowly but back here on earth everyone is aging at a normal rate. So once you come back to earth you may have only been gone for a few months in your mind but on earth it may have been 200 years since you left. I know it doesn't make much sense i have trouble wrapping my brain around this one. Cause it should work the same on earth if you are traveling at a high speed and someone is sitting still for the same amount of time you should be aging slower. makes no flippin sense.

Answer 4

The principle of relativity is that two observers in uniform motion cannot decide which of them is moving. One of the things which would enable them to decide would be if the speed of a photon released by one of them were moving at a different speed for the other. So the speed of light has to be the same for both--which is the crucial fact. To have this be true, you have to rethink the geometry of spacetime, from which all the cool time-dilation and length-contraction effects come.

If you have some math and physics background, I recommend Taylor and Wheelers "Spacetime Physics."

Answer 5

Special relativity is not that complicated, but it strikes down a series of assumptions we make from day to day and this confuses people.

Relativity is based on two principles. The first is very old and goes back at least as far as Galileo - it is the principle of relativity, or that there is no preferred observer or reference frame in the Universe. What this means is that if you and I are moving towards each other at 10 m/s, then I can say you are moving to me at 10 m/s, you can say I am moving to you at 10 m/s or someone on Earth may say that we are both moving at 5 m/s towards a common point. All are entirely equivalent, and the assumption is that we will all agree on all of them.

The second principle comes from a scientific observation that everyone gets the same result for the speed of light, even if they are moving. And this is the one that strikes down our assumptions, because if this is true (and it is from direct measurement) then the last assumption above - that we will all agree on all descriptions of events above - cannot be.

Imagine you are travelling away from me at 1/2 the speed of light and I shine a torch at you. You have two points in your car that are 1 light second apart (distance travelled by light in a second). Now if the assumption is true, then for me the light will pass your first point and then will reach your second point more than 1 second later, because in the time it has taken to travel the 1 light second you have moved away from me. But to you there is exactly one second between the light passing the two posts. Yet if we measure the speed of the light, we know we will both get the same answers.

So what we cannot possibly agree on is when the light passes each point. It is called the failure of simultaneity - observers moving relative to one another only agree that events are simultaneous if they happen at the same time AND the same place. Your two points are 1 light second apart and so we will not agree.

This is not an observation issue - it is simply that our reference frames are different.

Now for you whizzing away from me the time it takes the light to travel between the two points is 1 second. The clocks all runs just as normal for you. But for me it takes longer - the events of the light passing the second point happens later according to me. So your clocks run slower as measured by me.

Of course, because of the first principle, we are equivalent. So of we reversed the experiment and you shone the light, you would say the same about me.

The point to remember is that this is all down to failure of the assumption of simultaneity. It happens because the events are separated in space, and so observers moving relative to one another cannot agree on when they happen.

Answer 6

Blimey I'm not sure I understand it, but lemme give it a shot, I think it's that the closer you come towards the speed of light, or mebbe the further you go past it or something, the slower time passes by. Well the stress would make you age faster hehe.

Answer 7

simple...ill try... imagine u are in a train going away from a watch on a building (the big ben for example). if u go as fast as the speed of light, u will go as fast as the particle of a specific time. If u go faster then the speed of light, ull meat evry particle of time that the clock emmitted. in other words ull see the clock go backwards... Thats the theory...very complicated to explain...

Answer 8

Yes, You are correct. The length in the direcftion of motion decreases; mass also increases.

Mass, length and time the fundamental quantities in Physics are not constants.They are fuctions of speed; change with speed.

They differ for different observers moving with different speeds.

Answer 9

actually as you as you travel at speed of light your perception of time slowing down but the same is for the earth.

Answer 10

LOG ON TO :- http://www.bartleby.com/173/8.html

YOU WILL GET THE ULTIMATE RESOURCE THAT HOW TIME GETS SLOWER WHEN WE R TRAVELLING AT 100 TIMES THE SPEED OF LIGHT . I THINK

EINSTEIN WOULD HAVE THOUGHT THAT LIGHT ND TIME BOTH HAVE SOME CONTRADICTING PROPERTIESAND THATS WHAT U R WOVEN IN . SO BUB ON...............

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Albert Einstein (1879–1955).

Relativity:[[ The Special and General Theory. 1920.]]]]


------------------- On the Idea of Time in Physics------------------------


LIGHTNING has struck the rails on our railway embankment at two places A and B far distant from each other. I make the additional assertion that these two lightning flashes occurred simultaneously. If now I ask you whether there is sense in this statement, you will answer my question with a decided “Yes.” But if I now approach you with the request to explain to me the sense of the statement more precisely, you find after some consideration that the answer to this question is not so easy as it appears at first sight.


1 ))))) After some time perhaps the following answer would occur to you: “The significance of the statement is clear in itself and needs no further explanation; of course it would require some consideration if I were to be commissioned to determine by observations whether in the actual case the two events took place simultaneously or not.” I cannot be satisfied with this answer for the following reason. Supposing that as a result of ingenious considerations an able meteorologist were to discover that the lightning must always strike the places A and B simultaneously, then we should be faced with the task of testing whether or not this theoretical result is in accordance with the reality. We encounter the same difficulty with all physical statements in which the conception “simultaneous” plays a part. The concept does not exist for the physicist until he has the possibility of discovering whether or not it is fulfilled in an actual case. We thus require a definition of simultaneity such that this definition supplies us with the method by means of which, in the present case, he can decide by experiment whether or not both the lightning strokes occurred simultaneously. As long as this requirement is not satisfied, I allow myself to be deceived as a physicist (and of course the same applies if I am not a physicist), when I imagine that I am able to attach a meaning to the statement of simultaneity. (I would ask the reader not to proceed farther until he is fully convinced on this point.)


2))) After thinking the matter over for some time you then offer the following suggestion with which to test simultaneity. By measuring along the rails, the connecting line AB should be measured up and an observer placed at the mid-point M of the distance AB. This observer should be supplied with an arrangement (e.g. two mirrors inclined at 90°) which allows him visually to observe both places A and B at the same time. If the observer perceives the two flashes of lightning at the same time, then they are simultaneous.


3)))) I am very pleased with this suggestion, but for all that I cannot regard the matter as quite settled, because I feel constrained to raise the following objection: “Your definition would certainly be right, if I only knew that the light by means of which the observer at M perceives the lightning flashes travels along the length A —> M with the same velocity as along the length B —> M. But an examination of this supposition would only be possible if we already had at our disposal the means of measuring time. It would thus appear as though we were moving here in a logical circle.”

4)))) After further consideration you cast a somewhat disdainful glance at me—and rightly so—and you declare: “I maintain my previous definition nevertheless, because in reality it assumes absolutely nothing about light. There is only one demand to be made of the definition of simultaneity, namely, that in every real case it must supply us with an empirical decision as to whether or not the conception that has to be defined is fulfilled. That my definition satisfies this demand is indisputable. That light requires the same time to traverse the path A —> M as for the path B —> M is in reality neither a supposition nor a hypothesis about the physical nature of light, but a stipulation which I can make of my own freewill in order to arrive at a definition of simultaneity.”

5))) It is clear that this definition can be used to give an exact meaning not only to two events, but to as many events as we care to choose, and independently of the positions of the scenes of the events with respect to the body of reference 1 (here the railway embankment). We are thus led also to a definition of “time” in physics. For this purpose we suppose that clocks of identical construction are placed at the points A, B and C of the railway line (co-ordinate system), and that they are set in such a manner that the positions of their pointers are simultaneously (in the above sense) the same. Under these conditions we understand by the “time” of an event the reading (position of the hands) of that one of these clocks which is in the immediate vicinity (in space) of the event. In this manner a time-value is associated with every event which is essentially capable of observation.


6 ))) This stipulation contains a further physical hypothesis, the validity of which will hardly be doubted without empirical evidence to the contrary. It has been assumed that all these clocks go at the same rate if they are of identical construction. Stated more exactly: When two clocks arranged at rest in different places of a reference-body are set in such a manner that a particular position of the pointers of the one clock is simultaneous (in the above sense) with the same position of the pointers of the other clock, then identical “settings” are always simultaneous (in the sense of the above definition). 7


Note -----1

. We suppose further that, when three events A, B and C take place in different places in such a manner that, if A is simultaneous with B, and B is simultaneous with C (simultaneous in the sense of the above definition), then the criterion for the simultaneity of the pair of events A, C is also satisfied. This assumption is a physical hypothesis about the law of propagation of light; it must certainly be fulfilled if we are to maintain the law of the constancy of the velocity of light in vacuo.