Supervisor: Dmitri Fedorov

Title: Understanding Paradoxes In Special relativity

Einstein’s development of special relativity and furthermore general relativity was a major breakthrough in all aspects of science. However, some where still sceptic towards this new theory, since it has some philosophical and physical consequences for our perception of time.

In this colloquium I will go through some examples of where people think a paradoxical nature would arise, with respect to proper time, concurrency, and the speed of information. I will first do a short presentation of special relativity, and why it has to be sound, along with some notation, before tackling the paradoxes. The paradoxes I will present and solve are: the four particle paradox, the twin paradox, bell’s space paradox, the ladder paradox and if time permits Ehrenfest paradox.

Since special relativity is part of general relativity, there must not be any confusion and seemingly impossibilities. It is therefore equally as important to solve paradoxes, as to create them for only then can we build a robust theory.