Thought Experiments

The conclusion that clocks in the noses of accelerating rockets run faster than those in the tails is a long standing tradition in modern physics.  It is taught to and believed by students worldwide, and it is wrong.  A physicist long ago made a mistake and that mistake has been passed down without being questioned.  The mistake stems from what I have named the “Old News Aberration” where it is assumed that a photon can tell you the rate a clock is currently running, even though the only information it carries is “Old News.”  The entire working of the problem has nothing to do with the curvature of space-time or relativistic gravitational effects.  Newtonian kinematics and Doppler shift are used in the derivation and no formulas of relativity are ever applied.  All the while it is forgotten that the rocket will be length contracted and the clock in the nose will be time dilated at the arrival of the photon, offsetting the calculated Doppler shift.

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