Article 3:
The “Twins Paradox” and Time Dilation in Stationary Energy Theory

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One happy consequence of the somewhat “absolute” way of measuring speed that is required for calculating time dilation in Stationary Energy Theory is that the “Twins Paradox” that plagues special and general relativity, and has never been explained in a convincing way, doesn’t even arise. The twin who accelerates off to a distant star (or the muon in a particle accelerator) after a while closely approaches the speed of light as measured against the “stationary points” he (or it) passes. Time passes more slowly for the fast traveling twin (or muon) according to the Lorentz transformation for time intervals (Equation 8, in the Simple Time Dilation Derivation article, Article 2). The same is true for the return journey of the traveling twin (and the muon heading back around the circular path of the particle accelerator). Again he is traveling close to the speed of light with respect to the “stationary points” he passes through, so time again slows down for him. Meanwhile, the other twin on Earth (or the scientist observing the muon) has continued to travel at the same very low speeds (compared to the speed of light) that he always has done in relation to the “stationary points” he is passing through, so time continues to travel at the normal rate for him on Earth, that includes little or no time dilation. On return, the traveling twin’s clock will show much less time has passed for him than for his brother.

It is not clear, however, what the traveling twin would be returning to. For small amounts of time dilation, it would seem likely that the 3-D space "surface" of our universe would be stretchy enough to bend a little to contain matter, such as our twin, within the surface that is our timeline. Large amounts of time dilation could cause a space traveler to fall behind our universe's march forward through time to place him in another domain, or timeline. What might be found there is beyond this theory's ability to predict. There could be no matter there at all except what has been dragged down into it through black holes, or there could be one of many parallel universes to our own. This theory says black holes are created by the time dilation caused by high rotational speeds. See Article 17 for more on this theory's explanation of black holes.

Note that this theory doesn’t suggest the Earth is a “stationary point,” only that it, like most of the matter of the Universe, is traveling at a very tiny fraction of the speed of light compared to the “stationary points” it is passing through, so is subject to only extremely tiny amounts of time dilation. Even if the highly unlikely possibility were true that the Earth, along with the sun and our galaxy, had the very large speed with respect to the grid of “stationary points” of say 42,000 km/second, so that we had a Lorentz factor of 1.01 (1% of time dilation compared with some other place in the Universe), we would just experience it as being normal, anyway.

Our actual speed with respect to “stationary points” is likely to be much smaller than that. For instance, the solar system moves at a speed of about 370 km/s with respect to the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation (CMB) rest frame (the same as the grid of “stationary points” of this theory?). The Lorentz factor of this speed, though, is only: 1.00000089 (which would cause about one second of time dilation each two weeks).

The Different Way Time Dilation Works in Stationary Energy Theory

In SET, time dilation works differently than in Relativity. As we saw in the previous article, it still uses the Lorentz transformation for time intervals, but the velocity in the equation is not the velocity of something else relative to us but the absolute velocity of an object within the CMB rest frame. The observed time dilation will then be the object's time dilation minus our own time dilation. We could call this the "net time dilation." For example, the absolute velocity of the sun in the CMB rest frame is 370,000 m/s toward a point in Leo that is 11.4 degrees off the plane of the Solar System. Another object moving at 370,107 m/s in a similar direction will appear to be moving away from us at 107 m/s. Its time dilation, using the Lorentz transformation, 1/(1 - v²/c²)½, then converting to microseconds per day that its clock runs slow, gives that to be 65,841 microseconds per day. Our own time dilation is 65,803 microseconds per day. Subtracting the two, we get a net time dilation of 38 microseconds per day, which is about 7,000 times larger than Special Relativity gives for an object moving relative to us at 107 m/s. Relativity says the time dilation should be 5.5 nanoseconds per day.

This huge difference in the predicted time dilation between the two theories should make it easy to design experiments to determine which is correct. Relativity also predicts "gravitational time dilation," which conveniently makes up for velocity time dilation figures that would otherwise be far smaller than observed. SET says there is no gravitational time dilation, only time dilation due to velocity (In fact the reverse is true in SET, where time dilation caused curvature of space can caused enhanced gravitational fields, as in and near black holes -- see Articles 4, 17 and 18). An example of how this works is the time dilation experienced by GPS satellite clocks that run 38 microseconds per day faster than clocks on Earth. Relativity says there is 45 microseconds a day of gravitational time dilation, offset by 7 microseconds a day of velocity time dilation. SET notes that 38 microseconds a day of net velocity time dilation can be caused by only a 107 m/s velocity difference. This only about 1/4 of the vibrational speed of the atoms in the clock at standard temperature on Earth. In space, however, the clock will be very cold, near absolute zero, causing the clock atoms vibrational speed to be much lower, producing close to no time dilation. A similar clock on Earth will, when other net motions are taken into account, run slow by 38 microseconds per day, which will make the clock on the satellite appear to be running fast by the same amount.

An experiment to test SET time dilation

The simplest experiment would be to set up two atomic clocks, one at room temperature and the other at a very cold temperature, close to absolute zero. The clock at room temperature should run slow: around 5 nanoseconds per day if Relativity is correct, and around 35 to 45 microseconds per day (7,000 times higher) if SET is correct.

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