Let's look at what happens as B begins to accelerate.
Suppose A had previously got a friendly alien to place clocks at regular intervals between earth and the distant star. All of these clocks start off showing zero and they all tick forward at exactly the same rate. Twin B starts off seeing all these clocks tick at the same rate and showing the same time as the clock in B's spaceship.
As soon as B starts to move towards the star, A's clocks appear to slow down. But there is also another effect, A's clocks all begin to show different times from each other. The farther away one of A's clocks are, the farther ahead in time it appears to be.
When B's velocity is small, the time differences along A's clocks will also be small. The lower dotted line in the diagram is intended to show this.
Even when B has accelerated to full speed, A's nearby clocks will still only show a small time difference. But at the distance of the star, A's clock will show a very different time. In effect, as B accelerates, the clock on the star starts ticking forward at a furious rate (the thick red arrow).
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Suppose A had previously got a friendly alien to place clocks at regular intervals between earth and the distant star. All of these clocks start off showing zero and they all tick forward at exactly the same rate. Twin B starts off seeing all these clocks tick at the same rate and showing the same time as the clock in B's spaceship.
As soon as B starts to move towards the star, A's clocks appear to slow down. But there is also another effect, A's clocks all begin to show different times from each other. The farther away one of A's clocks are, the farther ahead in time it appears to be.
When B's velocity is small, the time differences along A's clocks will also be small. The lower dotted line in the diagram is intended to show this.
Even when B has accelerated to full speed, A's nearby clocks will still only show a small time difference. But at the distance of the star, A's clock will show a very different time. In effect, as B accelerates, the clock on the star starts ticking forward at a furious rate (the thick red arrow).
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next
