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twin paradox
Sign in to savethought experiment in special relativity
The twin paradox is a famous thought experiment in Einstein's theory of special relativity where one twin travels away from Earth at extremely high speed and returns younger than the twin who stayed behind, which seems to contradict the idea that motion is relative. It matters because exploring this puzzle helps us understand how time actually works differently for objects moving at different speeds, a counterintuitive prediction of modern physics.
AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.
In the Vinony graph
Within Vinony's link graph, twin paradox is referenced by 175 other articles, and connects out to Hendrik Lorentz, time dilation and Dirac delta function.
It sits within the topics Albert Einstein, Interstellar travel and Relativistic paradoxes.
Its subject is documented across 56 Wikipedia language editions.
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- thought experiment
- Part of
- special relativity
- Image
- Twinparadox overview.svg
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- Commons category
- Twin paradox
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Encyclopedic overview
During the ISS year-long mission, astronaut Scott Kelly (right) aged about 8.6 milliseconds less than his twin brother Mark (left), on Earth, due to relativistic effects.
Equations Formalisms
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “twin paradox” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.