Dear RG Friends
Please give some details about it and tell us why is your favorite paradox.
The Ehrenfest paradox concerning the rotation of a rigid disc in the theory of relativity. This is a thought experiment that is a paradox since it does not have an agreed upon resolution. For example, even though it was introduced over a hundred years ago, there are still different interpretations and proposed solutions currently being published in peer-reviewed journals. It also will always remain a thought experiment since no real materials could be rotated at the required speeds.
The description of the paradox from Wikipedia is:
The Ehrenfest paradox concerns the rotation of a "rigid" disc in the theory of relativity.
In its original formulation as presented by Paul Ehrenfest 1909 in thePhysikalische Zeitschrift,[1] it discusses an ideally rigid cylinder that is made to rotate about its axis of symmetry. The radius R as seen in the laboratory frame is always perpendicular to its motion and should therefore be equal to its value R0 when stationary. However, the circumference (2πR) should appear Lorentz-contracted to a smaller value than at rest, by the usual factor γ. This leads to the contradiction that R=R0 and R
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