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Please excuse my ignorance here, but for most of my life I thought that the twin paradox was predicted by special relativity (ie. time dilation). I also know that the twin paradox has been explained multiple times on this site and others. What I want to know is that, if general relativity were "turned off", would the paradox go away? In other words, is the only phenomenon involved the fact that a clock will run slower in an accelerating frame?

Qmechanic
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Jack R. Woods
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    The twin paradox has nothing to do with GR because it doesn't involve gravity. This should be apparent from the answers to How is the classical twin paradox resolved? – ACuriousMind Oct 09 '16 at 21:00
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    Hi Jack R. Woods: It might be helpful to mention that using an accelerated reference frame does not necessarily imply GR. – Qmechanic Oct 09 '16 at 21:14
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    "In other words, is the only phenomenon involved the fact that a clock will run slower in an accelerating frame?" - I believe that is essentially the case. In SR, the longest elapsed time along a world line from event P to event Q is along the inertial (unaccelerated) world line connecting the two events. All other world lines have less elapsed time and all other world lines involve non-zero proper acceleration over all or portion(s) of the world line. – Alfred Centauri Oct 09 '16 at 22:48
  • @Qmechanic I thought that this is what the equivalence principal tells us. I guess that I still can't wrap my brain around metrics and world lines which is why I am still asking the same question. Also, the answers to the original question given by ACuriousMind actually imply that it is about GR. There appears to be a paper I need to read given at the end of the answers to "How is the classical twin paradox resolved?" since it claims that both parties can go through an identical acceleration and still see a different delta T. Thank you for your courteousness and +1 to Alfred Centauri. – Jack R. Woods Oct 12 '16 at 03:03

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