Module 4, Section 4.

3 1

We have now established that time run at different rates for different objects based on the speed of
their relative motion. However, this give rise to a paradoxical situation famously known as the
Twin Paradox. Let’s analyze it step by step.
The Thought Experiment:

It is the year 2200 and now it is possible for humans to travel with the speeds comparable to
speed of light (It’s a thought experiment). There are two twins named Calvin and Mike. Mike
gets an opportunity to space travel for research purpose and he leaves earth on his 30 th
birthday. After travelling in his spaceship for six years at the uniform speed of 240000
km/sec (0.8c), he returns back on earth on his 36th birthday. But when he reaches home, he
finds that Calvin is celebrating his 40th birthday. Because Mike was travelling with high
speeds time ran slowly for him. Only 6 years passed for Mike and 10 years for stay-at-home
twin Calvin.
What’s the Paradox?
“How can Mike become younger?” This is what people generally think is wrong about this
thought experiment. But no. That’s not a paradox. Paradox is when some consequences of a
theory disproves or contradicts the theory it-self. Can you find something in the thought
experiment that contradicts physics? Time running slowly for Mike is physical consequence
of Lorentz Transformations that result from Postulates of special relativity. So “How can
Mike become younger?” is not pointing to any paradoxical situation, although it can be an
expression for shock or surprise.
So what exactly is paradoxical situation here? Let’s go back to the postulates of relativity
from where everything started. What did the first postulate say?
The laws of physics are the same in all inertial frames. No preferred inertial frame exists.
(The principle of Relativity).
According to this both Calvin’s and Mike’s frames of reference are identical. For Calvin, Mike
was travelling so time dilation applied to Mike and he appeared younger to Calvin. But then
as per the principle of relativity, Mike was stationary in his frame. For him, Calvin was
travelling and so time dilation should have applied to Calvin and he should become younger.
But here both Calvin and Mike agree that Mike is younger. Does that mean Calvin’s frame is
preferred? If yes, then this contradicts the relativity principle – and that is the paradox. We
followed special relativity to arrive at time dilation and now time dilation is contradicting
special relativity.
Solution to the paradox:
Every problem comes with its solution. Now that you have correctly understood the exact
paradox, I ask you to look back into its reason for the solution lies in the root.
Read again, and very carefully this time, the relativity principle:
The laws of physics are the same in all inertial frames. No preferred inertial frame exists.
(The principle of Relativity).

Shikha Shah Special Relativity – An Inception OE4BW

Module 4, Section 4.3 2

Found anything? No? Here, let me highlight the most important part of the statement:

The laws of physics are the same in all inertial frames. No preferred inertial frame exists.
(The principle of Relativity).
Now ask yourselves this question: Are both Kelvin’s and Mike’s frames of reference inertial? No.
Even if we simplify the things by considering earth’s motion to be uniform w.r.t. Mike’s spaceship
and neglect the acceleration required to take off and land Mike’s spaceship, the very fact that Mike
is returning back means he changes the “direction” of its speed – i.e. he changes his velocity. This
makes Mike’s frame an accelerated frame which is non-inertial.

And since relativity postulate only applies to inertial frames, there is no contradiction of the principle
and hence no paradox!

Time Travel:

The most interesting thing that comes out of Twin “Not a Paradox” is possibility of time travel. When
Mike returns back on his 36th birthday, his twin Calvin is celebrating his 40 th birthday. Which means if
Mike was on earth, he would be 40 years old but because of space-travel at high speeds, he
remained younger. In other words, for him it is the year 2206 but he came back in 2210. HE CAME
BACK IN FUTURE! This is how it is possible, yet only theoretically, to time travel in future. The more
the speed of Mike’ spaceship the later in the future he would have returned.

Fun Fact: Cosmonaut Sergei Avdeyev spent more than two years orbiting Earth in the Mir spacecraft
and due to time dilation he is today 5 ms younger he would be if he had never been in space!

What if he travelled at the speed of light? Time would stop for him. It is like if you are travelling on a
photon (again a thought experiment) and you look back to a clock (there is a clock everywhere in
relativity!) the light showing the next instant of time will never reach you because light travels with a
finite speed. So for you the clock will always show just one time.

But how this translates in the case of the twins? As far as we consider the outward journey of Mike,
(We can’t consider return trip as it is outside the scope of special relativity just as we discussed
above.) Calvin will see that at speed of light time stops for Mike. He will “see” Mike only in one state,
maybe waving back to him. Similarly, for Mike, time flows in regular manner in his frame. For him
Calvin is travelling at speed of light so for him time stops for Calvin. Even with speeds less than c,
each will observe time running slowly for the other one. Remember, relativistic effects are always
attributed to other person because one is always at rest in one’s own frame.

Relativity and Commonsense:

Special Relativity may sometimes seem to contradict the commonsense. Maybe that’s because we
can’t really “see” the relativistic effects. On the other hand, Newton’s laws are experimental and can
be experienced in daily life. But then according to Newtonian Mechanics light travels with infinite
speed – it reaches instantly everywhere. Not only light, there is no limit on maximum speed – and
hence kinetic energy - an object can gain. We know that’s not true. So Newtonian Mechanics was
also contradicting the “commonsense”. What I am trying to say is sometimes “contradiction to
commonsense” means something lacks in the theory (Newtonian Mechanics) and sometimes it
means the realm in which theory works or significantly shows its effects is outside the range of our
day-to-day experiences. But none of these make a theory less competent. In fact, over time these
theories may lead to new “commonsense”.

Shikha Shah Special Relativity – An Inception OE4BW