You know that business about how theoretically you could leap in a spaceship, travel really really fast, and the time dilation effect of special relativity would mean that your ship's clock slowed down relative to clocks on the earth, meaning effectively you travelled faster into the future? (As used in Planet of the Apes, etc.)
Well, I used to know this, but how does that work? I've got confused. Surely time dilation happens equally relative to each frame of reference. So equally people on earth would be travelling ridiculously fast relative to the spaceship, and thus relative to the spaceship the people on earth would be speeding into the future? (And I guess thus by symmetry if you reunited the clocks (and people) into the same frame of reference, the same amount of time would've passed for each).
So how does that 'trick' work? Is it something to do with the effects of acceleration (which isn't "symmetric" in the same way as velocity)?
Well, I used to know this, but how does that work? I've got confused. Surely time dilation happens equally relative to each frame of reference. So equally people on earth would be travelling ridiculously fast relative to the spaceship, and thus relative to the spaceship the people on earth would be speeding into the future? (And I guess thus by symmetry if you reunited the clocks (and people) into the same frame of reference, the same amount of time would've passed for each).
So how does that 'trick' work? Is it something to do with the effects of acceleration (which isn't "symmetric" in the same way as velocity)?
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