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The white line represents a plane of simultaneity being moved from the past to the future. In physics, the relativity of simultaneity is the concept that distant simultaneity – whether two spatially separated events occur at the same time – is not absolute, but depends on the observer's reference frame.
Specific clock synchronization procedures were defined by Einstein and give rise to a limited concept of simultaneity. [1] Two events are called simultaneous in a chosen reference frame if and only if the chosen coordinate time has the same value for both of them; [2] and this condition allows for the physical possibility and likelihood that ...
Relativity of simultaneity: Two events, simultaneous for one observer, may not be simultaneous for another observer if the observers are in relative motion. Time dilation: Moving clocks are measured to tick more slowly than an observer's "stationary" clock.
Observers moving at different relative velocities have different planes of simultaneity, and hence different sets of events that are present. Each observer considers their set of present events to be a three-dimensional universe, but even the slightest movement of the head or offset in distance between observers can cause the three-dimensional ...
The simultaneity of two events, or the order of their succession, the equality of two durations, are to be so defined that the enunciation of the natural laws may be as simple as possible. In other words, all these rules, all these definitions are only the fruit of an unconscious opportunism.
Two events will be simultaneous when they are on a line hyperbolically orthogonal to a particular timeline. This dependence on a certain timeline is determined by velocity, and is the basis for the relativity of simultaneity .
[17] [18]: 73–80, 93–95 He argued in 1898 that the simultaneity of two events is a matter of convention. [19] [note 2] In 1900, he recognized that Lorentz's "local time" is actually what is indicated by moving clocks by applying an explicitly operational definition of clock synchronization assuming constant light speed.
As simultaneity is relative, then, two observers disagree on whether the ladder fits. To the observer with the garage, the back end of the ladder was in the garage at the same time that the front end of the ladder was, and so the ladder fit; but to the observer with the ladder, these two events were not simultaneous, and the ladder did not fit.