3. A Klingon Bird of Prey is equipped with a disruptor cannon on its tail end, w

Question

3. A Klingon Bird of Prey is equipped with a disruptor cannon on its tail end, which can fire only perpendicularly to the motion of the ship. Standard Klingon warfare is to fly past an enemy ship and fire the tail-end cannon when the front of the Bird of Prey is even with the back of the enemy ship. (Assume the ships are close enough together that the cannon blast will hit the enemy ship right away.) The USS Enterprise, which has the same rest length as the Bird of Prey, is about to be attacked. Dr. McCoy worries that the Klingon Bird of Prey is length contracted and so the HOE -102 cannon blast will certainly hit the Enterprise. Captain Kirk remains calm because, as he says, the Enterprise is length contracted from the Klingon frame and therefore the cannon blast will definitely miss. Dr Medya Tibery Captis. Kieks' Teory puolit You are Mr. Spock and you draw the following spacetime diagram. Who is correct? Spacetime Diegum Respons M frukt C star is about to go supernova (that is, explode and Janet orbiting it must be evacuated. Th starship erprise is sent to the planet ick up some Cabrillo students on a first ap. The trajectories of terp. be star, and the planet are on the space-time dry

Explanation / Answer

Mr.Spock is correct. Because he is never wrong. Just kidding.

Let's look at where McCoy went wrong. McCoy considered only his frame of reference in which the line AC(line of simultaneity) showing the events happening at the same time when the Klingon head reaches USS tail. The point B is where the tail of Klingon Bird of Prey is as seen from the USS ship which is definitely between the head and tail of USS ship. A shot from that tail will definitely hit USS if the shot was made at that instant.

What McCoy failed to understand is that simultaneity is different for different frames of reference.The simultaneous events he expected to happen were not simultaneous from Klingon point of view as explained by Spock in the diagram. The line parallel to x' axis is the line of simultaneity for Klingon frame. So, when the event " the klingon head reaching USS tail occurs", The tail of the bird at that instant of time in Klingon fram of reference is at E. which is found by drawing a line of simultaneity through point C, where the head reaches the tail of USS, and finding the intersection on the world line of thetail of the ship. Which from the diagram can be shown to be not inside the world lines of the head and tail of the USS ship.

I tried to explain as clearly as possible. If still in doubt, Keep these points in mind.

Simultaneous events in one inertial frame are the spacetime points connected by the line of simultaneity( the line parallel to x axis of the frame)

McCoy considered simultaneous events in their frame where the tail of enemy ship is in firing range.

Klingon ship donot fire according to the simultaneoty of McCoy's ship. The simultaneity of Klingon ship is different from the previous one. So, when they fire from their tail at the instant C, the firing occurs at E and not B. So USS ship will be safe.

Whenever in doubt, always believe Spock.

Loved the question

May the force be with you.

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