subject: Theory of relativity and the twin paradox - An observation [print this page] Theory of relativity and the twin paradox - An observation
Most of you would be aware of the twin paradox. For those who are not aware of it, the twin paradox says that if one of the twins travels at a speed near to the speed of light for years, and then returns to earth, then his age would theoritically be lesser than that of his brother on earth. I often wondered how this could be possible biologically until I stumbled upon a possible explanation one day when I was thinking about the paradox. The age of the travelling twin would seem to be lesser as long as he is travelling away from earth at the speed of light, i.e if you could some how observe him from a static frame of reference on the earth when he is travelling, because, in that case, the light reflected from his body would reach your eyes after a long long time ! But when he returns to earth and when he is in the same static frame of reference as his twin, he would all of a sudden be of the same age as that of his brother ! This means that this illusion is a cause of the theory of relativity in physics but biologically it is impossible. This also explains the following fact which makes the paradox questionable : mathematically from the frame of reference of the travelling twin, it is the static twin who would be moving away at the speed of light ( light from the static twin takes an equal amount of time to reach the travelling twin ). So for the travelling twin, it is the static twin who should be older. Once we consider the fact that their actual/biological ages remain same, it isn't difficult to explain that they only seem older to each other just because of their relative velocities. I am no genius at mathematics but this does seem logical, doesn't it?
