Caption: An animation illustrating that "Moving clocks run slow."
The special relativity effect time dilation is illustrated in the animation. It's probably NOT the best illustration though.
The moving blue dots represent light signals inside and between green and red pairs of spaceships.
The moving blue dots act as the clocks.
The relative speed of the space ships is 0.866c (86.6 % of the vacuum light speed).
You have to watch the animation rather closely.
You will see that the clock moving runs slow compared to a set of clocks at rest with respect to each other, but separated from each other in space.
Note the asymmetry of the setup. The moving clock is NOT compared to a single stationary clock, but to a set of starionary clocks. It's compared actually directly to the one stationary clock it is adjacent to at one point in spacetime.
If you go into the details---and we won't---you will find that this asymmetry leads to the symmetry that observers in each frame of a pair of frames in relative motion observe the clocks in other frame as running slow.
There is no inconsistency in special relativity.
The details involve the interaction of space and time in special relativity.
Credit/Permission: ©
Cleon Teunissen AKA User:Cleonis,
before or circa 2009
(uploaded to Wikipedia
by User:Mister009,
2009) /
CC BY-SA 3.0.
Image link: Wikipedia.
File: Relativity file:
time_dilation_animation_2.html.