lecture 9

Topics: The structure of science and common sense The speed of light Time dilation The twin paradox The Doppler effect The twin paradox and inertial frames The structure of science and common sense

from www.raremaps.com

The beautiful edice of Newtonian mechanics, which we have seen a bit of in the last few weeks, provides a wonderful precise mathematical description of most of the things we see in our everyday world. It is obviously right. But it is also wrong. We have discussed qualitatively the underlying quantum mechanical reality from which Newtons mechanics emerges as an approximation. In the next few weeks, we will discuss in quantitative detail the bizarre things that go wrong with Newtons picture at large velocities. What is going on here? Newtonian mechanics beautifully captures the mathematical essence of what we know about the world we have grown 1

up it. Once we get used to the mathematical language, it is perfectly in accord with our common sense understanding of the world. We feel in our bones that it is right. How can it be wrong? But it is wrong. I am going to tell you today that it is wrong and what is right and you will not understand me or believe. Even if you have heard this before, and you think that you have internalized it, you are still not going to really understand it or believe it. In fact, you will not even have any sense of what it would mean to understand it or believe it. It is that strange. It doesnt make any sense. The rst thing to say is that there is no reason why our sense should have anything at all to do with what happens at extreme conditions, far from what we are used to in everyday life. We have some direct intuition about things that are about our size and maybe a few powers of ten bigger and smaller. We have feeling in our bones what happens for accelerations not much different than g , and velocities like those we are used to. But if we go far outside this familiar range of parameters, it would be rather surprising if our common sense worked very well. We should be prepared for surprises. If anything, what should surprise us is that our common sense works as far as it does. We have to go to really enormous velocities, on our everyday scale, before Newtonian kinematics starts to break down. And atoms, which exhibit quantum behavior in all its glory, are very small. This is a theme that we will return to several times. The wonderful thing about the discipline of modern science is that we can say sensible things about phenomena even when our sense doesnt work. We do this by keeping ourselves rmly grounded in what we understand, but at the same time recognizing the limitations of our knowledge. It is useful to think of science as a map of a peculiar space - the space of parameters that describe physical phenomena. We expand our knowledge in much the same way that ancient explorers improved their maps of the known world. We work our way out from what we know into the unknown, pushing farther and farther in different directions away from the range of phenomena that we see in the everyday world. In the next few weeks, we are going to discuss one of these directions the realm of the very fast. When it is strange, dont be surprised. The reason that you dont understand is very simple. It is that you are slow! Not mentally slow, but physically slow. You have spent all your life moving at speeds very very tiny compared to the speed of light, so nothing in your experience has prepared you for the phenomena that happen all the time at large speeds (which we call relativistic speeds a rather bizarre grammatical construction if you think about it, but standard). Try to bear that in mind when it seems that what we are doing doesnt make any sense. The speed of light The speed of light is exactly 299,792,458 m/s. What exactly means in this case is just what it says. Because the speed of light, as we will see, is built into the structure of space and time, it makes sense to use it to dene our unit of length (the meter) in terms of our unit of time (the second). This is what is done in SI, the International System of Units. It is no longer necessary to keep a standard 1 meter bar in a vault someplace. The second is now dened in terms of a particular oscillation of an atom in an atomic clock. The meter is then dened as the distance 2

that light travels in 1/299,792,458th of a second. I should say that when I talk about the speed of light, I always mean the speed of light in vacuum that is in empty space.1 Things get more complicated in material like glass because the interactions of the light with the material can slow the light down. Now 299,792,458 m/s is fast. It is a heck of a lot faster than we can actually move ourselves. But it is certainly not innitely fast. With modern electronics, we can measure very short times, so it is not impossible to see the effect of the nite speed of light even over fairly short distances. The point I am trying to make here is that while motion at close to the speed of light is far beyond our everyday experience, it is not science ction. In fact, we routinely measure the speed of light, and routinely see things (small things like electrons, but things nevertheless) moving at speeds very close to the speed of light. But the surprising thing about light in a vacuum is that the speed of light that we measure doesnt depend on the velocity of the object that produced the light, and it doesnt depend on the velocity of the measuring apparatus. Now if you think that you understand this, you obviously have not been listening carefully enough, because this doesnt make any sense at all. Nevertheless, it is true. If, for example, I am running towards a light-bulb at speed v carrying a light-speed meter, a device to measure the speed of light, all of you sitting at rest see the light from the bulb approaching me at a speed v + c. But when I do the measurement, I get the same value for the speed of light that I would get if I were standing still. In fact, I get the same value that you would get measuring the same light beam in about the same place at about the same time, but standing still. The same thing happens if I am running away from the light source. c=299792458 v c=299792458 v c=299792458
..... ............................................ .................................................. . . . . .. ..... ............................................ .................................................. ..... ..... ............................................

(1)

This is absolutely crazy. Surely if I am moving towards the light beam, I should register a larger speed on my light-speed meter. That is what common sense would say. However, that is not the way the world works. The way the world works is that the speed of light in vacuum is constant, period! It is not that something goes wrong with my light-speed meter. This bizarre fact is built into the way the world works. The full power of this remarkable fact, the constancy of the speed of light, is unleashed when we combine it with another, much more reasonable fact about the way the world works the principle of relativity. The principle of relativity says simply that all uniform motion is relative. There is no absolute sense in which I can say I am moving. There is no preferred notion of standing still. In a moment, we will formalize this idea with the notion of an inertial frame of reference. Note that we can tell if our motion is not uniform. Acceleration is accompanied by forces that we
The notion of empty space is itself rather problematic. Even classically, space is only completely empty at absolute zero. And when we include the effects of quantum mechanics, as we will see much later, empty space begins to look anything but empty. Nevertheless, there is a well-dened meaning to the notion of the speed in light in vacuum. Its role as a cosmic speed limit survives all this extra complication.
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can feel in our bones. But uniform motion is not detectable, so long as everything else we need is moving along with us. This, of course, is something that feel in our bones for the slow motions that we are used to. We all know this very well from travel in vehicles, cars, trains, planes, and whatnot. We are going to assume, with Einstein, that it remains true at relativistic speeds. Inertial frames The idea of an inertial frame of reference or just inertial frame for short, is one that already plays an important role in non-relativistic mechanics. It is an attempt to formalize the notion that motion is relative in an operational way. To do this, we must carefully describe what velocity means by describing precisely what we need to measure it. On the surface, the speed of light does not seem to be a complicated concept. You measure it in the obvious way with clocks and meter sticks, by dividing the distance traveled by the time taken. But rst, you have to synchronize your clocks! This is where the idea of an inertial frame comes in. An inertial frame is a real or imaginary collection of clocks that are xed with respect to one another and synchronized, for example by requiring that some signal that originates midway between each pair of clocks arrives at the two clocks at the same time.2 In addition, an inertial frame must not be accelerating, which is easy to check because you can just demand that Newtons laws hold for small velocities free particles travel in straight lines, that sort of thing. So we have two fundamental principles. A. That the laws of physics are the same in all inertial frames, and B. That one of the laws of physics is that the velocity of light is a constant with the same value in all inertial frames, As you will see in more detail in the notes, these two principles are amazingly powerful. They will revolutionize our picture of space and time. Now lets see some of the consequences of putting these two ideas about the world together. Time dilation Lets start with one of the strangest and most trivial of the consequences of relativity time dilation. The phenomena of time dilation can be stated precisely as follows. Observations done on a single clock moving with speed v with respect to a number of clocks xed in an inertial frame show the ticking of the moving clock slowed down by a factor of 1 v 2 /c2 . The standard way of deriving this result is to consider an idealized clock made out of two parallel mirrors and a pulse
It doesnt matter for this purpose whether we are using a light signal or the Pony Express, as long as the signal travels at the same speed in both directions!
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of light bouncing back and forth between them:

. . .. . . . . . . . . light . . . . pulse . . . . . . . . . . .

mirror . .

mirror A light-clock at rest If the distance between the mirrors is L, the time for each tick of the clock, dened as the time for the pulse to get from one mirror to the other, is L/c. Now suppose that the two mirrors of this light clock are mounted on parallel tracks a distance L apart and the two mirrors moved down the tracks with velocity v . Now the system looks to observers in the xed frame as shown below
.. . .. .. . . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . .. . .. .. . . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . .. . .. .. . . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . .. . .. .. . . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . ..

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . L . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..... ............... .

(2)

mirror . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. .. . ..

.. . .. .. . . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . ..

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . .

.. . .. .. . . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . ..

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . .

.. . .. .. . . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . ..

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . .

(3)

mirror A light-clock in motion Obviously, from the point of view of the many clocks in the inertial frame, the light pulse has to go farther when the single light clock is moving. Thus if light always travels at the same velocity, the ticks of the light clock take longer when it is moving. Call the factor by which the ticks are longer . Then we can compute as follows. Each vertical transit of the light from one mirror to the other in the moving frame takes time L/c (just from the denition of - because L/c is the time for a tick in the rest frame). And because light travels at the same speed, c, the length of the path from one mirror to the next is therefore L/c. The light pulse moves vertically a distance L (because the tracks are a distance L apart) and horizontally a distance v L/c (just the velocity of the light clock multiplied by the time). Now we look at the geometry of the motion. Then Pythagoras tells us that (L)2 = (Lv/c)2 + L2 (4) which implies = 1 1 v 2 /c2 (5)

So time is no longer sacred. And this cant just be a special property of light clocks, because if we used some other kind of clock to measure the time, and got a different result, then we would be 5

able to distinguish between the moving frame and the frame in which the light clock is xed. But this violates the principle that all frames are equivalent. Every kind of clock must tick out seconds at the same rate in all inertial frames. Incidentally, this factor is going to reappear all the time, so it pays to actually either memorize it, or to be able to reproduce the light-clock argument in real time so you can get it whenever you need it. It is quite easy with modern electronics and atomic clocks to see relativistic effects like time dilation. In fact, both special and general relativistic effects are very important in one very practical application the Global Positioning System which is based on a system of atomic clocks aboard satelites. The relativistic corrections are small, because the satellites are traveling at only about 4000 m/s, but enormous accuracy is required to make GPS work and the relativistic effects must be properly included. See for example http://www.physicscentral.com/writers/writers-00-2.html. Even more dramatic examples of time dilation occur all the time with elementary particles. That seems like a lot to ask of tiny particles that are supposed to be elementary and have no internal structure. But the fact is that quantum mechanics provides us with internal clocks for many elementary particles because they are unstable, and when they are sitting still and evolving in time, they have a constant probability per unit time of decaying into other lighter particles. We can actually see these internal clocks ticking (at least in an average sense) by watching the particles decay. The observed lifetime of unstable particles is a tangible measure of how fast these internal clocks are ticking. We see this all the time in particle experiments. But we are relying on another fact all particles of a particular kind are exactly the same. We never actually measure the decay rate of the same decaying particle in two different frames. But we can quite easily measure the lifetime of a particle at rest, and then measure the lifetime of the same TYPE of particle in a moving frame. We nd that the ratio of the lifetimes is . Since all particles of a particular type are identical, this is just as good. Another important thing about time dilation is that although it is strange, it is probably the easiest of the relativity principles to remember and use. The thing to remember is The single clock measures the shorter time. (6)

If you keep this in mind, and just remember that > 1, you will always be able to reconstruct the right formula. Use time dilation whenever you can to solve problems! The twin paradox Now you may very well be thinking, at this point, that once you dene what you are talking about carefully, with inertial frames, that there isnt anything particularly strange about motion at relativistic speeds, but that we have just confused the issue with a bizarre denition of measurement. Even our experiment on decays of elementary particles might be just a matter of a bad denition of what we mean by the ticking of their internal clocks. Perhaps, you think, that there is some other way of constructing our light-speed meters so that the speed of light is not constant and the bizarre features of relativity go away. Think again! Perhaps the simplest way of making clear that 6

something totally bizarre is going on is to discuss the twin paradox. This is a classic thought experiment in which one twin takes a trip on a rocket moving at relativistic speeds, while the other twin remains at home. When the traveling twin returns, because his clocks have been ticking slowly, he is younger than his twin. His biological clock is no different from any other clock. Relativity has slowed down the aging process. If this is not strange, I dont know what is. Again, this experiment has not been done conclusively with people. Astronauts in MIR or the space shuttle do age less rapidly than the rest of us, but the difference is sufciently small at the speeds of mere orbital motion that the dont see a huge difference in biological clock (which arent very accurate). The difference can be measured by atomic clocks. And a number of very accurate experiments have been done showing exactly this effect with the internal clocks of unstable elementary particles. The twin paradox is so peculiar that I want to work out an example of how it looks to the two twins who are aging differently. To do this, it is useful to rst understand the relativistic Doppler effect. The Doppler effect While the speed of a light beam does not change when we go from one inertial frame to another, its frequency does change. This is not surprising, since the same thing happens for sound or any other wave. It is called the Doppler effect and shows up, for example, in the change in sound of a train whistle when the train goes by. First, let me remind you how the Doppler effect goes for sound, or any other wave when we are moving at nonrelativistic speeds. Suppose that a train is moving towards me at speed v and its whistle emits sound waves which, when the train is at rest, have frequency 0 , and wavelength 0 . The speed of sound, Vs , is the product of the frequency and the wavelength: Vs (m/s) = 0 (m/cycle) 0 (cycles/s) (7) The inverse of the frequency is the period of the sound wave, which is the time between successive crests of the wave. So now let us look at two successive crests of the wave as the train moves towards us illustrated below: sound meter sound meter
. . . . ..... . ....................... . | . train . . .

..... ....................... |

. . . . . . . . . . s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0 . 0 . .

t=0 t = 1/0

(8)

..... ....................... | train

V v v

Because the train is moving forward as it emits the wave, the crests are closer together than they would be if the train were standing still. The distance between crests for the train at rest is just the wavelength, Vs 0 = (9) 0

The distance between crests for the moving train is v = Vs v 0 (10)

Thus the wavelength of the sound as recorded at the sound meter is reduced by the nonrelativistic Doppler factor Vs v (11) Vs Because (7) must be satised, the frequency is increased by the inverse of (11), and the train whistle has a higher pitch when it is moving towards us. If the train is moving away, the argument is exactly the same we just have to replace v v in (11). Now suppose we do a similar thing, but replace the train with a rocket moving at relativistic speed, and replace sound with light. The speed of light is the product of the frequency and the wavelength: c (m/s) = 0 (m/cycle) 0 (cycles/s) (12) The inverse of the frequency is the period of the light wave, which is the time between successive crests of the wave. In the diagram, almost everything is the same, except that because of time dilation, the time between the emission of successive crests of the wave is longer than 1/0 by the ubiquitous factor of , because the moving clock ticks more slowly. Thus the picture looks like light meter
c
. . . . .............................. . . | . . rocket . .

light meter

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t=0 t = /0

(13)

.............................. | rocket
v

(cv )

Because the rocket is moving forward as it emits the wave, the crests are closer together than they would be if the rocket were standing still. The distance between crests for the rocket at rest is just the wavelength, c 0 = (14) 0 The distance between crests for the moving rocket is v = (c v ) 0 (15)

Thus the wavelength of the light as recorded at the light meter is reduced by the relativistic Doppler factor 1 (c v ) 1 v/c = (1 v/c) = (16) c 1 + v/c 1 v 2 /c2

Because (12) must be satised, the frequency is increased by the inverse of (16), 1 + v/c 1 v/c (17)

and the light has higher frequency when the rocket is moving towards us. This is called blue-shift because raising frequency in the optical spectrum is a shift towards the blue. Again, if the rocket is moving away, the argument is exactly the same we just have to replace v v everywhere. This is called red-shift because lowering frequency in the optical spectrum is a shift towards the red. There is one very important distinction to note about the relativistic Doppler effect versus the nonrelativistic version. In the relativistic version, it doesnt matter whether the rocket is approaching the observer at speed v or the observer is approaching the rocket at speed v . It cant, because of the principle of relativity. This is not true for the nonrelativistic Doppler effect because the air in which sound moves denes a special frame. The twin paradox and inertial frames We can now use the Doppler effect to understand time dilation and the twin paradox, by keeping track of every tick of the moving clock. Imagine that twin 1 takes a trip to planet X, at distance L from earth, but stays in constant communication with twin 2 behind on earth using radio waves, or some other electromagnetic waves that have xed frequency in twin 1s frame (the rocket frame). We will assume the typical form of the twin paradox that we discussed above, where twin 1 goes out to planet X at speed v , quickly turns around, and returns at the same speed. Here are a series of snapshots showing the important times during the trip. Twin 1 leaves twin 2 at t = 0 traveling at constant v staying in constant radio communication 1v t=0 2 X

Twin 1 arrives at planet X at t = L/v , turns around (quickly) and sends a turn-around signal to twin 2, indicating that he has reached the planet. v1 t = L/v 2 X

The turn-around signal reaches twin 2 at t = tX = L/v + L/c v1 t = tX 2 9 X

Twin 1 and twin 2 are reunited at t = 2L/v 1 t = 2L/v 2 X

The radio transmitter is a clock number of ticks (cycles) is t where is frequency of transmitter. Thus the number of ticks sent by twin 1 is T , where T is the total time he aged on the trip. But twin 2 receives red shifted photons for a time tX = L/v + L/c and blue shifted for 2L/v tX = L/v L/c. Therefore, the number of cycles received by the twin 2 is 1 v/c 1 + v/c 1 v/c L 1 + v/c L L + + v c 1 + v/c + v 1 + v/c 1 v/c L L v c 1 v/c v (19) (20) (18)

1 + v/c L 1 v/c

= Thus

2L 1 v 2 /c2 = T v

2L 1 v 2 /c2 v Nonrelativistically, we would have expected T = T = 2L v

(21)

Thus twin 2 sees rocket clocks ticking more slowly by a factor of 1 v 2 /c2 = 1/ (22)

This is time dilation. The moving clock ticks more slowly as seen by the clock at rest. This is also the twin paradox. Because twin 1 has sent out fewer ticks, he has also aged less. He is younger than twin 2 when he returns. There are a couple of other things to notice about (22). First note that the two terms in (22) are equal. This had to be the case, because twin 1 sent the same number of ticks on the way to planet X as on the way back, so twin 2 received the same number of ticks in the red-shifted signal from the trip out as in the blue-shifted signal from the trip back. But now, you say, why isnt the situation symmetrical? After all, from twin 1s point of view, twin 2 (along with the rest of the earth) has moved away at speed v and then come back at the same speed. Why is it that twin 1 is younger at the end, rather than twin 2? Lets look at the trip from twin 1s point of view, assuming that it is twin 2 who is sending out radio signals the whole time. Now things look a bit different. Here is the chronology. At t = 0, twin 1 watches twin 2 and 10

the earth recede at constant v . Twin 1 receives radio signals from twin 2 that are red-shifted until planet X appears. Planet X is shown as dashed in the gure because it is not in the same inertial frame as twin 1s ship, so twin 1 has to be a whiz at relativity to calculate its position. 1 t=0 v2 X

Planet X reaches twin 1 at t = T /2, turns around (quickly) and starts to recede again. From this point on, twin 1 receives blue-shifted signals until earth reappears and he is reunited with twin 2. 1 2 t = T /2 Xv

Twin 1 and twin 2 are reunited at t = T 1 t=T 2 X

Now we can check that the two pictures are consistent. The number of cycles that twin 1 receives is

T 1 v/c + 2 1 + v/c

1 + v/c T = 1 v/c 2

1 v/c 1 + v/c

1 v/c + 1 v/c

1 + v/c 1 v/c

1 + v/c 1 + v/c (23) (24)

T 1 v/c + 2 1 v 2 /c2 which using (20) is

1 + v/c 1 = T 1 v 2 /c2 1 v 2 /c2

2L (25) v which is exactly what we expected. I hope it is clear from this discussion what the asymmetry is. It should be clear that I have not quite described this process the way twin 1 experiences it. He doesnt just watch earth receding at t = 0. He blasts off and accelerates. Similarly, he doesnt just watch planet X turn around. He decelerates and accelerates again in the opposite direction. He feels these accelerations in his bones! From twin 1s point of view, the switch from red-shift to blue-shift occurs the moment he turns around. This makes sense. He knows that he has turned around. But from twin 2s point of view, nothing special happens when twin 1 reaches the planet. He has to wait until the turn-around signal arrives to see the shift from red-shift to blue-shift. Here is another way of saying what the difference is. Twin 2, remaining on earth, is at rest in a single inertial frame the whole time. Twin 1 is not. He is in one frame on the way out, and in a 11

different frame on the way back. It is the fact that twin 1 must switch from one inertial frame to the other that makes his experience different. Relativity may be strange, but it is consistent.

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