A question about light and time.?

Question

All right here goes back to special relativity.

There is still something i don't get.

If you fly to a place 7 light years away, away from me at 99.9% the speed of light and then fly back, you will have experienced 2 years of travel time and i will have experienced 14 years of watching you...

But if there are only two bodies and nothing else to reference from, it could be taken in the exact opposite way so that I must have spent two years traveling and you spent 14 years waiting...

how much time do i actually experience 2 years or 14 years. (or do we have to take a page from Schroedinger's book and say both?)

Answer 1

Yes... I posed this question to my physics teacher when I was in Senior Physics...  so it shows you've thought and understood the beauty of "non-inertial frames of references being IDENTICAL".

However, in this scenario... they are not both NON-INERIAL frames of reference...

You are in one..., while your friend... has had to ACCELERATE.. at least to TURN around and come back to you.  Once there is acceleration, then it's no longer SPECIAL RELATIVITY, but GENERAL relativity.. and this distinguishes why your 'accelerated' friend has only aged 2 yrs, while you have aged 14yrs..

Answer 2

the guy who accelerated to light speed would know about it, since he felt the acceleration

you didn't feel any forces so you would have waited 14 years

Answer 3

you spent 14 years waiting, and 14 years watching because you did not go anywhere, therefore time does not change for you :)

Answer 4

14 years from your frame of reverence because you experienced 14 years