Ehrenfest Paradox - Ehrenfest's Argument

Ehrenfest's Argument

Ehrenfest considered an ideally Born rigid cylinder that is made to rotate. Assuming that the cylinder does not expand or contract, its radius stays the same. But measuring rods laid out along the circumference should be Lorentz-contracted to a smaller value than at rest, by the usual factor γ. This leads to the paradox that the rigid measuring rods would have to separate from one another due to Lorentz contraction; the discrepancy noted by Ehrenfest seems to suggest that a rotated Born rigid disk should shatter.

Thus Ehrenfest argued by reductio ad absurdum that Born rigidity is not generally compatible with special relativity. It's worth mentioning that according to special relativity an object cannot be spun up from a non-rotating state while maintaining Born rigidity, but once it has achieved a constant nonzero angular velocity it does maintain Born rigidity without violating special relativity, and then (as Einstein later showed) a disk riding observer will measure a circumference:

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