alien_inc

Yes, thats what I was thinking of... And I see where I was going wrong in my thinking. Thanks for the response, it was very much appreciated.

Sorry, I should have been more detailed in my original post. I'm specifically talking about the time dilation between the surface at the equator (having the most angular velocity) and the center of the sphere. So what I'm imagining is you take a cross-section of the sphere, perpendicular to the axis of rotation, through the center to the surface. When approaching c at the surface, the matter at the center is moving considerably slower then matter at the surface, thus producing a time dilation between the surface and center. My question is does the warpage of spacetime at the surface of the sphere; a) actually tare the sphere apart, producing a swirl like pattern when looking at the above mentioned cross-section, or b) does it just look like that if viewing the object from an external point of view and locally no change is detected, or c) there is no swirl, no taring, no time dilation between the surface and center. Does this clear things up a little?

Hi all, I was just was wondering how relativity would view a system consisting of a massive, large radius, rotating solid. Now I'm ignoring the possibility of gravitational collapse, and I'm unsure if doing so affects this thought experiment. Anyway, as we increase the rotational speed of the object, the matter at the "equator" of the sphere would approach the speed of light much faster then the matter on the interior of the sphere. And as we know, the closer you get to c, the more time dilation you get between the center and surface of the object. Would this cause a "swirl" effect within the structure of the object, due to the dilation of time between the center and surface of the solid? Or does the solid maintain its structural integrityand just appear to swirl due to the warpage of spacetime? Thanks for any input on this question. Regards, Joe