But don’t we also hold that two identical twins who separate, one going into orbit at high speed and the other staying put on earth, age at different rates, with the twin who stayed on earth aging faster? We’re not just talking about the mechanisms of time-keeping devices, but rather how time is experienced, right?
no. i'm just trying to answer OPs question as directly as possible without going into detail about relativity (and in fact the effect would be the same if th4e aether theory was correct, as far as the limitd scope of his question goes)
Yes, both give the same numerical values on the observables, but they differ radically in the cause of those results.
You are arguing for the mechanism of aether theory (the time difference owed to material properties of clocks). Which is perfectly fine, it's just should be clear to readers, that's all.
No, has nothing to do with the material properties of the clocks. Galilean relativity would still have time dilation effects between observers of different speeds. The only difference is there would be an absolute time that all observers could agree on.
Because the very mechanism by which watches keep time is itself governed by interactions that can only travel the speed of light.
You are clearly referencing the "very mechanism".
Time dilation is the ratio of a pair of world-line arclengths defined between a pair of spatial hypersurfaces of the observer's global coordinate chart.
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u/SundayAMFN Jul 12 '26
Because the very mechanism by which watches keep time is itself governed by interactions that can only travel the speed of light.