Whippman's Answer

THE answer to the question posed by Professor Dingle 1 is quite simply that the Lorentz transformation formula does not imply what he claims it does. In the situation he describes, the interval d t ′ that B's clocks would show is related to the interval d t shown by A's clock by the usual...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature (London) 1973-07, Vol.244 (5410), p.27-27
Main Author: WHIPPMAN, M
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Humanities and Social Sciences
letter
multidisciplinary
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
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Summary:THE answer to the question posed by Professor Dingle 1 is quite simply that the Lorentz transformation formula does not imply what he claims it does. In the situation he describes, the interval d t ′ that B's clocks would show is related to the interval d t shown by A's clock by the usual formula where β and γ have their usual significance, and D is the coordinate difference between the two events as measured in A's frame. This formula involves only the relative velocity β of A and B, and it is clearly impossible to deduce from it anything about the relative sizes of d t and d t ′. The common result, described too succinctly by the phrase “the moving clock appears to be slow”, refers only to the very special case where the coordinate difference D is zero. Even in this case, the corresponding difference measured by B will not be zero, the situation is clearly asymmetric and no paradox arises.
ISSN:0028-0836
1476-4687
DOI:10.1038/244027c0