Lecture 11, #3 – More Proper Time

PROBLEM DESCRIPTION

During spawning season, two extremely fast salmon swim upstream, one behind the other, past a startled fisherman who measures their speed to be 0.6c. The fisherman notes that 12.5 ms passed on his sportsman all purpose compass/knife/GPS/watch unit between the first salmon swimming by and the second salmon swimming by.

a) According to the salmon, how much time passes between the first salmon passing the fisherman and the second salmon passing the fisherman?

b) How far apart are the two salmon, as measured by people standing by the river?