Paradoxes and their Findings in Special Theory of Relativity

Abstract

After the publication of Special Theory of Relativity in 1905, scientists raised questions that seemed to be impossible to explain due to relativity. These paradoxes seem to make contradictory statements and challenge the legitimacy of the theory of relativity until it was accepted by the scientific community.  This `paper presents some of those paradoxes and findings of Special Theory of Relativity, namely the Bug Rivet Paradox, Bell’s Spaceship Paradox and the changes in the electromagnetic fields due to a change in frames of reference. The paper shows how these problems were solved using coordinate transformations, and the key insights into the world we live in, such as the explanations of why electric and magnetic fields are interlinked.

Physicists came up with apparent paradoxes which challenged the theory. Apparent paradoxes arise due to two statements that seem logical but do not agree with each other, or an antinomy. We will be looking at some of these problems; Bug-Rivet paradox, Bell’s Spaceship paradox and the link between electric and magnetic fields.