Accelerating spaceships paradox and physical meaning of length contraction
| dc.creator | Petkov, Vesselin | |
| dc.date | 2009-03-30 | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2026-07-07T12:57:46Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2026-07-07T12:57:46Z | |
| dc.description | 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 physicists as a proof that (i) only physical bodies, but not space, undergo relativistic length contraction and (ii) a relativistically contracted body experiences a stress. This note, dedicated to the one hundredth anniversary of Hermann Minkowski's paper "Space and Time", shows that a proper relativistic treatment of the paradox demonstrates that it is a manifestation of a specific relativistic acceleration phenomenon, which does not have a classical analog. This means that length contraction plays no role in the resolution of the paradox. It is also shown that no stress is involved in the length contraction effect. | |
| dc.description | 8 pages | |
| dc.identifier | https://arxiv.org/abs/0903.5128 | |
| dc.identifier | http://arxiv.org/abs/0903.5128 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/225052 | |
| dc.subject | Classical Physics | |
| dc.title | Accelerating spaceships paradox and physical meaning of length contraction | |
| dc.type | text |