In physics, the twin paradox is a thought experiment in special relativity, in which a twin makes a journey into space in a high-speed rocket and returns home to find he has aged less than his identical twin who stayed on Earth. This result appears puzzling because each twin sees the other twin as traveling, and so, according to a naive application of time dilation, each should paradoxically find the other to have aged more slowly. How the seeming contradiction is resolved, and how the absolute effect (one twin really aging less) can result from a relative motion, can be explained within the standard framework of special relativity. The effect has been verified experimentally using precise measurements of clocks flown in airplanes and satellites.