Who Is Right?

Einstein's Theories of Relativity and Gravitation by Albert Einstein, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here. Who Is Right?

Who Is Right?

We may permit Mr. Francis to remind us here that neither M nor M′ may correct his observation to make it accord with the other fellow’s. The one who does this is admitting that the other is at absolute rest and that he is himself in absolute motion; and this cannot be. They are simply in disagreement as to the simultaneity of two events, just as two observers might be in disagreement about the distance or the direction of a single event. This can mean nothing else than that, under the assumptions we have made, simultaneity is not an absolute characteristic as we had supposed it to be, but, like distance and direction, is in fact merely a relation between observer and objective, and therefore depends upon the particular observer who happens to be operating and upon the reference frame he is using.

But this is serious. My time measurements depend ultimately upon my space measurements; the latter, and hence both, depend closely upon my ideas of simultaneity. Yours depend upon your reading of simultaneity in precisely the same way.]* [Suppose the observer on the track, in the above experiment, wants to measure the length of something on the car, or the observer on the car something on the track. The observer, or his assistant, must be at both ends of the length to be measured at the same time, or get simultaneous reports in some way from [90]these ends; else they will obtain false results. It is plain, then, that with different criteria of what the “same time” is, the observers in the two systems may get different values for the measured lengths in question.]220

[Who is right? According to the principle of relativity a decision on this question is absolutely impossible. Both parties are right from their own points of view; and we must admit that two events in two different places may be simultaneous for certain observers, and yet not simultaneous for other observers who move with respect to the first ones. There is no contradiction in this statement, although it is not in accordance with common opinion, which believes simultaneousness to be something absolute. But this common opinion lacks foundation. It cannot be proved by direct perception, for simultaneity of events can be perceived directly,]24 [and in a manner involving none of our arbitrary assumptions,]* [only if they happen at the same place; if the events are distant from each other, their simultaneity or succession can be stated only through some method of communicating by signals. There is no logical reason why such a method should not lead to different results for observers who move with regard to one another.

From what we have said, it follows immediately that in the new theory not only the concept of simultaneousness but also that of duration is revealed as dependent on the motion of the observer.]24 [Demonstration of this should be superfluous; it ought to be plain without argument that if two observers cannot agree whether two instants are [91]the same instant or not, they cannot agree on the interval of time between instants. In the very example which we have already examined, one observer says that a certain time-interval is zero, and another gives it a value different from zero. The same thing happens whenever the observers are in relative motion.]* [Two physicists who measure the duration of a physical process will not obtain the same result if they are in relative motion with regard to one another.

They will also find different results for the length of a body. An observer who wants to measure the length of a body which is moving past him must in one way or another hold a measuring rod parallel to its motion and mark those points on his rod with which the ends of the body come into simultaneous coincidence. The distance between the two marks will then indicate the length of the body. But if the two markings are simultaneous for one observer, they will not be so for another one who moves with a different velocity, or who is at rest, with regard to the body under observation. He will have to ascribe a different length to it. And there will be no sense in asking which of them is right: length is a purely relative concept, just as well as duration.]

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This book is part of the public domain. Albert Einstein (2020). Einstein's Theories of Relativity and Gravitation. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022.

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