Janus58
Valued Senior Member
First off, I will assume that you assume that all three clocks read the same at the start of this scenario, as determined by the Inertial frame which the Earth is at rest.Fourth scene:
A------------------L=9LS---------------->Earth<------------------L=9LS-----------------------B
v=0.9C............................................................................................................v=0.9C
With Earth as the reference, A's time goes slower, and with Earth as the reference, B's time goes slower. So when they meet, the time is same.
but
With A as the reference, B's time goes slower, and with B as the reference, A's time goes slower. When they meet, please tell me whose time is slower?
But, as I already mentioned in the Earlier post, due the Relativity of simultaneity, this is not the case according to A. When A's clock reads zero, both the Earth clock and the clock on B will already read some time after zero.
For example, according to the Earth, it takes 10 sec for A and B to reach it. during that time A and B's clocks will tick off 4.36 sec and each reads 4.36 secs when they reach the Earth.
A agrees as to the respective times on each clock when they meet. Thus according to A, its clock starts at 0 and ticks off 4.36 sec until it meets up with the Earth.
This means a couple of things:
Since A also measures it velocity with respect to the Earth as being 0.9c, the distance between itself and Earth when A's clock reads 0 is only 3.924 ls (this is a consequence of length contraction)
The Earth clock tick's 0.436 the rate of A's clock and accumulates ~ 1.9 sec from the time A's clock reads 0 and A meets up with the Earth.
What this means is that, according to A, The Earth clock already reads 8.2 sec when A's clock reads 0. (Relativity of Simultaneity).
Also, according to A, B is traveling towards it at 0.9945c, and due to time dilation accumulates only ~0.468 sec as A's clock advances 4.36 sec. B's clock then already read a bit over 3.9 sec when A's clock read 0.
B was also only 4.336 ls away from A when A's clock read 0. (only 0.4112 ls further away than the Earth was at that same moment).
The upshot is that while everyone will agree as to what all the clocks read when they are all together, they won't agree upon the respective readings for any moment before that.
Whenever you work out such a scenario, you can't just consider time dilation alone, you have to take everything into account, including length contraction and the relativity of simultaneity.