English

Submarine paradox softened

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2024-06-19 v3

Abstract

In Supplee's submarine paradox, a naive argument based on Lorentz contraction leads to a contradiction that a fast submarine should sink in the water's reference frame but float in the submarine's reference frame. Due to the submarine's rigidity constraints, it is not easy to resolve the paradox in a manifestly covariant form. To simplify the problem, we consider a version of the paradox in which one fluid moves through another fluid. An analysis of ideal relativistic fluids in a weak gravitational field shows that the moving fluid has a larger pressure and hence sinks, in agreement with known results for the rigid submarine.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2112.11162,
  title  = {Submarine paradox softened},
  author = {Hrvoje Nikolic},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2112.11162},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

8 pages, 1 figure, significantly revised and extended, accepted for publication in Am. J. Phys

R2 v1 2026-06-24T08:26:05.236Z