So, I get this much, no problem...
Time dilation itself is not the problem for me. It makes perfect sense to me 9 days out of 10. The other 10% of days I suspect it's an illusion, not an actual change in the rate of time flow, but I can suspend my disbelief and take it on faith. Not sure that's the healthy thing to do, but I can and do do it.
What really buggers me, however, is the Twin Paradox. If Adam hangs out at home while Brad travels far far away, why is it that they should age at different rates. Relativity seems to be saying to me that they both perceive the time dilation happening to the other, and thus it balances itself out for no net differential. Adam sees Brad aging faster. Brad sees Adam aging faster. End result, both people are actually aging at the same rate. Shouldn't that make sense?
But I gather that's not how it really works. If instead one of the observers in truth ages faster than the other, wouldn't that mean you have a way of verifying whether you are at rest or in motion at a constant velocity? If so, it violates one of the postulates of special relativity.
But all the explanations I can find involve rather complicated math or someone saying "it just does" with no attempt at explaining why at all. I don't want to spend 100 hours just trying to grasp the math. Yet I want to know why it stops being relative for both frames of reference. I gather it has to do with the Doppler effect, but no one wants to just say that - there's no simple summaries on the web, just stupidly dense jargon and math. If you can find something that explains (simply) why Adam and Brad don't actually age at the same rate despite both thinking the other is dilating, please share.
Animaniacs to the rescue. Oh, well now it makes perfect freakin' sense to me. Should have just watched that in the first place.
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