Relativity and Cosmology

   

Time vs. Duration: A Reinterpretation of Special Relativity

Authors: Ion Vlad

The twin paradox is often presented as a consequence of time dilation and the relativity of simultaneity, yet its standard interpretation frequently relies on simplified Minkowski diagrams and ambiguous coordinate assignments that obscure the physical meaning of the turnaround event. This paper re-examines the paradox by constructing a Lorentz-consistent spacetime diagram in which inertial and accelerated phases are treated separately and coordinate assignments are preserved consistently across reference frames. We show that a single spacetime event is invariant under Lorentz transformation; different observers may assign different coordinates to that event, but they do not describe different physical occurrences. The apparent contradiction arises not from simultaneity itself, but from conflating event identity with frame-dependent observation and from applying measurement transformations inconsistently after acceleration has ceased. This construction clarifies the operational meaning of simultaneity and demonstrates that the apparent paradox disappears once all measurements are analysed within a common comparison framework.

Comments: 23 Pages.

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Submission history

[v1] 2026-06-02 14:23:16

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