In this thought experiment, my twin brother and I are both turning 20 at the airport.
At midnight on our birthday, we are both exactly age 20 years.
He stays put while I get on a 777 and fly around the world. The flight takes me 24 hours and so he waits 24 hours. I arrive and we are both age 20 years plus 24 hours.
If I instead get on an SR-71 and fly around the world at 3x speed of the 777, the flight takes me 8 hours so he waits 8 hours. I arrive and we are both age 20 years plus 8 hours. Clearly, we are both younger in this scenario than the first one.
If I got onto a super plane flying at 0.99x light speed and fly around the world, the flight takes me 1 second. Since I’m so fast, he should also only wait one second. Intuitively, I’m back and we’re both 20 years and 1 second old.
But my understanding of time dilation is that I’m 20 years and 1 second old when I’m back, but he would be much older since I was almost going at light speed.
Why is that? My flight and his wait time should both be much much shorter since I was flying much much faster.
In: Physics
The cause of time dilation is that the speed of light is the same for everyone. And that’s very weird.
If you stay still while your brother moves, the speed of light is 300,000 km/s for you, and the same 300,000 km/s for your brother. So how can you and your brother measure the same speed of light if he is moving faster than you? I don’t know, it’s how the universe works.
So if the speed of light keeps the same, then two things must be different between you and your brother: the distance and the time (space contraction and time dilation).
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