Physics – Classical Physics
Scientific paper
2009-03-30
Physics
Classical Physics
8 pages
Scientific paper
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.
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