Related papers: Gedanken experiment to test Bell's spaceship parad…
The Bell Spaceship Paradox has promoted confusion and numerous resolutions since its first statement in 1959, including resolutions based on relativistic stress due to Lorentz contractions. The paradox is that two ships, starting from the…
A fifty-year old apparently paradoxical thought experiment involving two accelerating spaceships and a thread hat connects them states that the thread will break due to length contraction. This paradox still appears to be regarded by some…
We study the Dewan-Beran-Bell thought experiment of two spaceships connected by a thread that start accelerated motion and discuss the proper length of the thread by means of Born's definition of proper length for arbitrary motion.
We analyse the Bell paradox from the point of view of an inertial referential frame and from the one of an accelerated frame. We calculate the distance between the two accelerated spaceships as it appears in each referential and we show…
Unravelling apparent paradoxes has proven to be a powerful tool for understanding the complexities of special relativity. In this paper, we focus upon one such paradox, namely Bell's spaceship paradox, examining the relative motion of two…
The meaning of Lorentz contraction in special relativity and its connection with Bell's spaceships parable is discussed. The motion of Bell's spaceships is then compared with the accelerated motion of a rigid body. We have tried to write…
Relativistic rigid motion suggests a new version for the so-called `twin paradox', comparing the ages of two astronauts on a very long spaceship. Although there is always an instantaneous inertial frame in which the whole spaceship, being…
In the standard formulation of the twin paradox an accelerated twin considers himself as at rest and his brother as moving. Hence, when formulating the twin paradox, one uses the general principle of relativity, i.e. that accelerated and…
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…
We show that the equation of motion for a rigid one-dimensional elastic body (i.e. a rod or string whose speed of sound is equal to the speed of light) in a two-dimensional spacetime is simply the wave equation. We then solve this equation…
It is proved that the definition of simultaneity by Einstein leads to the paradox motion of he string from the viewpoint of the observer in the inertial system S' moving with velocity v with regard to the inertial system S.
The twin paradox is the best known thought experiment associated with Einstein's theory of relativity. An astronaut who makes a journey into space in a high-speed rocket will return home to find he has aged less than a twin who stayed on…
A spaceship with one thruster producing a constant magnitude force is analyzed for various initial conditions. This elementary problem, with one object acted upon by one force, has value as a challenge to one's physical intuition and in…
Selleri's paradox, based on an analysis of rotating frames, appears to show that the speed of light in an inertial system is not normally isotropic. This in turn seems at odds with the second postulate of special relativity requiring a…
We investigate and solve in the context of General Relativity the apparent paradox which appears when bodies floating in a background fluid are set in relativistic motion. Suppose some macroscopic body, say, a submarine designed to lie just…
Demonstrations of quantum entanglement which confirm the violation of Bell's inequality indicate that under certain conditions action at a distance is possible. This consequence seems to contradict the relativistic principle of causality,…
In 1989 Supplee described an apparent relativistic paradox on which a submarine seems to sink to observers at rest within the ocean, but it rather seems to float in the submarine proper frame. In this letter, we show that the paradox arises…
Spontaneous particle-pair formation is a fundamental phenomenon in nature. It can, for example, appear when the potential energy between two particles increases with separation, as if they were connected by a tense string. Beyond a critical…
One of the most discussed peculiarities of Einstein's theory of relativity is the twin paradox, the fact that the time between two events in space-time appears to depend on the path between these events. We show that this time discrepancy…
We study the quantum version of the classical twin paradox in special relativity by replacing the twins with quantum detectors, and studying the transitions and entanglement induced by coupling them to a quantum field. We show that the…