Most people have unwittingly constructed themselves an intuitive mental model of how the world around them functions (based mainly on Newtonian mechanics, whether they know it or not). In our every-day experience this way of thinking is adequate, but in unfamiliar situations it can turn out to be flawed. This is especially true where the speed of light is approached, as is nearly always the case in high energy particle physics.

In order to begin to understand what is going on in the experiment, it is necessary to get to grips with the basics of relativity. The two apparent paradoxes explored on the next few pages should be enough to convince you of this!

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