** \suppose a rocket is traveling through space and moving at a speed close to the speed of light. three minutes pass on the rocket as recorded by an observer on earth. how many minutes pass on earth? less than three minutes because of time dilation more than three minutes because of time dilation three minutes because time is absolute less than or greater than three minutes depending on the speed

If we're not VERY careful about the words we use and how we use them, this relativity stuff can get VERY confusing VERY fast.

The question is worded poorly. It says "Three minutes pass on the rocket as recorded by an observer on Earth." I claim that this is murky and hard to understand. To me, I don't really know what this means, so I'm going to change the wording of the question:

"Even though the rocket is moving at some incredible speed, close to the speed of light, a Physics student back on Earth has some way of watching the clock that the astronaut is carrying with him on the spaceship. How long does the Physics student need to watch the flying space-clock in order to see it tick off 3 minutes ?"

I think that's a much clearer question. To answer it, all you have to remember is that clocks slow down when they're moving, and the faster they move, the slower they get. This is one of the incredible things predicted by Einstein's theory of Relativity. It seems really weird, but it's been proven correct hundreds of times in the past hundred years.

In fact ... (get this; this is really cool): Every GPS satellite carries a clock and broadcasts the time on its clock, and your phone or car-GPS reads the time on the clocks of all the satellites it can hear. Now, satellites in orbit are moving pretty fast ... fast enough that the slow-down in their clocks would totally mess up the system. So the clocks in the satellites are BUILT to run a little fast ... just enough so that when the GPS is your car hears the satellite broadcasting its time, everything comes out just right. If the clocks in the satellites were NOT adjusted to compensate for the way Relativity affects them, GPS would not work !

So now where were we ? Oh yes ... the question you posted.

When clocks move, they slow down. The student on Earth watched (somehow) the clock on the space ship measure 3 minutes. Since the rocket was moving, the astronaut's clock was running slow, so the student had to wait MORE than 3 minutes to see the space clock change that much. The correct choice is: More than three minutes pass back on Earth, because of time dilation.

B. more than three minutes because of time dilation

Explanation:

The other dude did too much.

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