Relativity?

The theory of relativity indicates that a space ship (matter), approaching the speed of light, foreshortens in the direction of motion and increases in mass, and time slows relative to the rest of the universe. True or false. If false, explain.|||All true. The main point you mention is "...relative to the rest of the universe..." Aboard the spaceship everything, including time, is 'normal.'|||uuhhh..... i think its false. because i remember that the theory youre talking about has a different name.|||Its all true. I am not explaining as you say explain if false.|||I just laughed a little because my husband loves Star Trek, Star Wars and all that stuff and we have debated this many times. I pretty much just like to pick on him about it though, I actually agree that the faster the ship goes the more mass it would gain and light speed would be almost impossible to reach and maintain.|||It is true. Try researching it.|||True (mostly).





When you are traveling at relativistic speeds, lengths contract and times dilate.





In modern notation, we don't say that mass increases. Mass should be defined as rest mass which is a Lorentz-invariant quantity. Some folks and old texts still use the concept of a relativistic mass, though, which increases at relativistic speeds. So you could answer either way on that. It's just a semantics issue.|||True, that is the prediction from the theory of relativity.|||Those changes would only be seen by someone back at the launch pad. They would not be seen by the people on the space ship.The people on the space ship would see those changes happening to everything else, but not to themselves.|||false, but only technically.





at relativistic speeds, lenth is contracted in the direction of motion and inertial mass does increase which means the faster it goes, it becomes more and more difficult to accelerate the object (ie: change it's direction and/or speed).





so you're statement is correct so far.





time dilates, but this doesn't mean it slows relative to the rest of the universe. it slows relative to a refrence that is not moving in the same direction as fast or faster. so relative to some other reference like a spaceship or planet, not to the "rest of the universe" as there might be something in the universe with the same velocity or more speed in the same direction, and the time will be observed differently depending on your observational frame of reference.





for instance, if your reference frame is another ship moving the same direction at the same speed, a second in one frame will be identical to a second in the other frame.





but of course, as you put it, it's relative. time wouldn't slow down for the ship as it sees it...it would see time move no differently in their frame...no matter what your frame is, to you, a second is a second is a second according to you in your frame. it's not like a guy going near the speed of light will look down at his watch and it's moving slower than normal. so if ship A is the one with a velocity at relativistic speeds compared to ship B (we can just take ship B to be at rest as velocity is always measured with respect to something else...no such thing as actual rest, just what we define to be rest or observe to be rest in our own reference frame) then ship A comes back to meet up with ship B. then the amount of time that passed that ship A observed will be less than what ship B observes.





this type of thing is also seen in varying regions of a gravity well since there is more gravitational acceleration at the earth's surface than in orbit aroud earth and relativity works no matter how something is accelerated (if your in a ship with no windows and you accelerate, you can't tell if you got a push from say engine thrust or if you are in a planet's gravity), so a satellite's "clock" will be slower than what the same clock would measure on earth.





relativity is weird, but it's all provable with both math and experiment and general relativity is probably the most elegant theory in all of science. you should really pick up a copy of einstein's paper on special and general relativity. it's practically all conceptual, no math involved...and it's so brilliantly simple and obvious after you read it just like all the best science is. i'm surprised it has not become the law of general relativity with all the proof there is for it, but whatever. takes a few centuries to become a law usually.|||True.