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A young-looking woman astronaut has just arrived home from a long trip. She rushes up to an old gray-haired man and in the ensuing conversation refers to him as her son. How might this be possible ?
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VerifiedThe goal of this exercise is to give an explanation for the following scenario concerning the special theory of relativity.
A young woman astronaut arrives home from a long trip, to see her son as an old man.
This situation is a well known twin-paradox which arises as a consequence of omitting that the two persons in question are each in an inertial frame of reference. However, this isn't true since the person that is leaving the Earth and returning to it will have to be in a non-inertial frame of reference because it will need to accelerate (even if the speed is constant, going in a circle means existence of an acceleration). The age difference that appears is then consequence of the general relativity and its principle of equivalence.
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