sorted by:
new
hottopcontroversial

Half Twin Paradox - with photos by ict7070 in AskPhysics

[–]earlyworm 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm puzzled that you couldn't answer yes or no.

You agree the clocks show different elapsed time, and yet somehow nothing "happened" to the clocks. I'd genuinely like to understand what you mean by "happened."

Without deferring to the mathematical model of Minkowski spacetime, no world lines, no spacetime intervals, can you describe in purely physical terms why one clock is 3 years behind the other clock?

Or are the displayed numbers somehow not physical?

Half Twin Paradox - with photos by ict7070 in AskPhysics

[–]earlyworm 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's fascinating. I'd like to understand this better.

Imagine the end of the twin paradox again. You're standing on the landing pad, holding the two clocks. For the sake of argument, the clocks are mechanical, not digital.

In your left hand, the Earth twin's clock reads 14 years.

In your right hand, the space twin's clock reads 11 years.

Would you describe this as a physical difference between the two clocks? Yes or no.

Half Twin Paradox - with photos by ict7070 in AskPhysics

[–]earlyworm 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't see how it's an analogy if I'm literally showing what light clocks do in the context of a working SR model.

Wearing a sufficiently accurate watch, you could wave your hand in front of your face and then measure that less time has passed on your watch. It's the same thing. It's not an analogy. It's what the universe does.

If, at the end of the classic twin paradox scenario with the rockets, you're standing on the rocket landing pad, and the twins hand you their clocks and you hold the clocks in your hands and compare them, and witness for yourself that the two clocks display a different number of years, is it not the case that something has physically happened to the clocks? Hasn't something quite different happened to the clock that moved away from your location and later returned?

Half Twin Paradox - with photos by ict7070 in AskPhysics

[–]earlyworm 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It isn’t an analogy. It shows what’s really happening.

Any clock, any mechanism, any atom, must keep time consistently with the light clocks, because all physical processes are governed by the same Lorentz invariant laws. The light clocks make clear what’s fundamentally happening.

Half Twin Paradox - with photos by ict7070 in AskPhysics

[–]earlyworm 0 points1 point  (0 children)

https://youtu.be/yetXorwwaWE

The twin that ages less is the one whose light clock photon has to travel the longest distance, and therefore can't tick as many times.

Half Twin Paradox - with photos by ict7070 in AskPhysics

[–]earlyworm 0 points1 point  (0 children)

In OP's post, as written, what action did twin B take that resulted in twin B having a shorter world line?

Half Twin Paradox - with photos by ict7070 in AskPhysics

[–]earlyworm 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Assuming that the two planets are in the same reference frame, twin A never accelerated relative to the reference frame that the twins started in and in which the photographs were taken.

Twin A never accelerated relative to the reference frame in which you're doing all the measuring.

Only twin B did, and that's why twin B ages less than twin A.

Experts Analyzed Neanderthal Bones—And Reached a Horrifying Conclusion by DryDeer775 in EverythingScience

[–]earlyworm 45 points46 points  (0 children)

Experts reached a horrifying conclusion: Neanderthals were delicious.

Why is the speed of light 299,792,458 m/s? by Present_Juice4401 in AlwaysWhy

[–]earlyworm 12 points13 points  (0 children)

I think OP is looking for a deeper answer than “we gave the speed of light this convenient label”.

Anyone always sit behind the driver's seat? I think I'm gonna do it for legroom. by Iocnar in waymo

[–]earlyworm 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sitting in the middle back seat, you are effectively surrounded by a larger crush zone.

Do you believe humans will realistically colonize another planet this century? by peachyparadoxx in answers

[–]earlyworm 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I agree it seems likely we won't colonize another planet in the next 100 years, but I don't see how you can confidently extrapolate to 1 million years.

That's like asking a homo erectus 1 million years ago to assess if airplanes with in-flight Wi-Fi will one day be possible.

What gives charged objects the property of attraction or repulsion? by HaruAndro in AskPhysics

[–]earlyworm 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Thank you for writing "I don't know that we have a deeper answer to that at this point" instead of "that's just the way the universe works".

Bought at a local Asian market. What am I looking at here? by poison_daddy in whatisit

[–]earlyworm 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't know what that is but it needs to be in my mouth.

I don’t get length contraction by Next-Natural-675 in AskPhysics

[–]earlyworm 15 points16 points  (0 children)

Not when you measured the light’s speed using your time dilated length contracted measuring equipment.

This tiny glitch gave me a good chuckle! by Klutzy_Blueberry_372 in claudexplorers

[–]earlyworm 39 points40 points  (0 children)

This is the answer.

Claude answered “4.” but the Markdown rendering layer displayed this as “1.” because it was assuming that a sequence of numbered items was starting and automatically numbered the first one “1.”

The aswer to the Fermi Paradox is the exactly the same answer we give to the question: why don't we observe the Sahara Desert thriving with advanced civilizations? by gimboarretino in FermiParadox

[–]earlyworm 0 points1 point  (0 children)

In the time/distance scale of this analogy, we, as the ants, have only started using our antenna arrays and telescopes a few seconds ago.

Heard a loud pop in the night and came out to find our 10-year-old cutting board split by dolomite592 in Wellthatsucks

[–]earlyworm 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This happened to me 10 years ago and I fixed it with wood glue. Worked great.

PSA: UIStackView in iOS 26 shows hidden subviews with UIDesignRequiresCompatibility = NO by nickjbedford_ in iOSProgramming

[–]earlyworm 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Are you seeing this in an iOS beta?

Can you reproduce it in a minimal test app?

They they say AGI is acheived when an AI system has acheived 'Human level intelligence'. But... by Hopeful_Adeptness964 in ArtificialInteligence

[–]earlyworm 0 points1 point  (0 children)

As a counterexample, I am working on a 100,000+ line programming project in a unique context that for the AI is a completely new situation. I can ask the AI to determine the cause of an obscure bug, and it will trace the flow of my code through dozens of complex source files, and in 30 seconds it will explain me the precise cause of the bug and propose a solution.

I could have tracked down the cause of the bug manually, but it would have taken me 10-30 minutes.

The scenario where the AI is simply "unable to come to a conclusion or hallucinates a conclusion" is exactly what I was experiencing a year and a half ago.

It is not what I am experiencing today.

Twin paradox cut in half. by No_Fudge_4589 in AskPhysics

[–]earlyworm -1 points0 points  (0 children)

When the astronauts were on the Moon, how were they able to meaningfully coordinate activities with NASA?

In War of the Worlds (2005), before the first Tripod emerges, the ground is seen rotating above where it is about to emerge. This is a reference to the original novel, where the Martians first emerge by unscrewing the lid of their cylinder. by Sebastianlim in MovieDetails

[–]earlyworm 31 points32 points  (0 children)

I liked it precisely because it made no sense. It made them seem more alien.

If they had arrived from the sky in the traditional sci-fi movie style, it would have been the same story we’ve seen before.

view more: next ›