(A2-10) Nefertiti’s point of view:
She is static in frame N throughout the proceedings. Cormorant is travelling. His static reference frame is C1 on the outward leg of the journey but on the return leg it is C2. This is all shown in the illustration below:
Nefertiti is stationary in her own frame and so - more or less - is distant Mars (obviously Mars and Earth aren’t really stationary relative to one another but the change in distance is too slow to be significant here).
① In Nefertiti’s reference frame, what is the distance between Nefertiti, in the pub on Earth, and Mars, in units of light minutes?
② So how long will Cormorant’s journey to Mars and back take, in Nefertiti's frame of reference? Add these numbers to your table.
③ Now we need to find the time that will pass for Cormorant. For this, we can use the time dilation equation which we derived in section 2 5:
where 0 denotes the rest frame of reference for whatever is being measured. In this case, the time cormorant experiences, he will experience in his own frame of reference, so this is frame 0. Nerertiti is a moving observer, so hers is frame 1, and she will expect that time will be dilated for Cormorant.
Use this equation to find the time that, from Nefertiti’s point of view, Cormorant will experience on each leg of the journey. Hence find the total flight time he experiences. Add the numbers to the table.
