Twin Paradox Part 1 - Confusion and Embarassment

Whoever is aware of the Special Relativity developed by Albert #Einstein must have heard about the famous "Twin Paradox" ( #TwinParadox ). This is not what contemporary physicists are concerned about nowadays, but educators, general public and philosophers are still actively discussing it. Mainstream science considers it a "no-paradox" as it is believed to have been adequately explained.

For me it is a big mess that scientists would not like to get involved with. In order to begin with some discussion on the paradox, I should present what the definition of the paradox is. And that is where the mess begins...

1. Definition Inconsistency

Typing on Google "twin paradox definition" on 26/07/2014 that is 109 years after Special Relativity was born, we get thousands of pages and the following prominently displayed definition:

twin paradox - noun - PHYSICS: the apparent paradox arising from relativity theory that if one of a pair of twins makes a long journey at near the speed of light and then returns, he or she will have aged less than the twin who remains behind.

Without going into details now, please take my word for it - it's wrong because it is incomplete.

If so, then why does the main search engine on the Internet choose the wrong definition? Computer/human error perhaps. Embarrassing but errors do happen.
Asking Yahoo search engine we have no preferred definition but the usual list of relevant web pages. In the first one, from dictionary.com we get:

twin paradox - noun: a phenomenon predicted by relativity. One of a pair of identical twins is supposed to live normally in an inertial system whilst the other is accelerated to a high speed in a spaceship, travels for a long time, and finally returns to rest beside his twin. The travelled twin will be found to be younger than his brother

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition© William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollinsPublishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Not much different than the previous one. Oxford online dictionary and many others say more or less the same. Well, people who write dictionaries are not experts in physics. They likely describe what the term means to general public in which case general public is wrong, but this is not of concern to linguists. But why would it be that the public is so wrong? Where does it get the ideas from?

I have consulted an authority on physics and time who is also educating the public in his popular bestsellers: Stephen Hawking in his book A Brief History of Time "sold more than 10 million copies in twenty years [...] on the London Sunday Times best-seller list for more than four years and [..] translated into 35 languages by 2001.[1]. 
And this is what the book says about the paradox in the context of a discussion of the significant difference in age of some twins when... 

[...] one of the twins went for along trip in a spaceship at nearly the speed of light. 

When he returned, he would be much younger than the one who stayed on Earth. This is known as the twin paradox, but it is a paradox only if one has the idea of absolute time at the back of one's mind.[2]

I am not surprised now that popular "definitions" are like those shown above. Stephen Hawking presented the paradox incorrectly. He simply glossed over the most important issue that is not touched at all in the quoted paragraphs. Just differential aging alone of some initially identical objects is not paradoxical at all as it can be demonstrated by using refrigerators. No logical problem whatsoever seeing two twin plants in a different stage of their development when one has been kept in cold and the other in full sun.

I have checked Bing, Encyclopedia Britanica and Wikipedia on line resources and all appear to extract or define the paradox in a different way. In Wikipedia[3] we read:

In physics, the twin paradox is a thought experiment in special relativity involving identical twins, one of whom makes a journey into space in a high-speed rocket and returns home to find that the twin who remained on Earth has aged more. This result appears puzzling because each twin sees the other twin as moving, and so, according to an incorrect naive application of time dilation and the principle of relativity, each should paradoxically find the other to have aged more slowly.

2. Correct Definition

Britanica and Wikipedia definition shown above are the correct definitions. How do I know this?

The paradox has been famously introduced to public domain by Langevin[4] and independently analysed at length by Einstein himself [5], although he did not use twins but focused on clock indications rather than referring to human characters hence this paradox is also known as the "clock paradox".

The nature of the twin paradox is not differential aging but  the claims made in the name of Special Relativity that each of any two systems moving relative to each other may calculate that the partner is aging slower and therefore it is younger. But this is impossible for one system to be younger and older at the same moment.

Many respectable sources then spread misinformation to millions of people. This is a big problem and some might see it as a conspiracy. I see it just as as negligence. 
Dictionaries explain the  meaning of an expression as understood by the English speaking population, not scrutinising the physical accuracy. 
For the origin of Stephen Hawking's error, only he can answer. 
Frighteningly inaccurate is the reference to twin paradox by an online entry originated from New Scientist website[6] which so far I valued for it's high standards. They repeat the same Hawking's truncated - that is incorrect - explanation and refer to The Open University as the source. The very first comment at the very bottom of the comment stack highlights this a follows:

Steve Walker on January 13, 2012 4:50 PM What this doesn't cover is the paradox element. The video says that Bert will come back younger. But look at the problem from Bert's point of view. He has seen Al disappear at near light speed, so then it's *Al's* clock which runs slower. Viewed from Bert's point of view (everything's relative, remember) then Al will be younger when Bert gets back.
That's the paradox: one of them will be younger by the end of the exercise - but which one?

Two years later no one has reacted to the comment and misinformation spreads.

So before we have even started discussing the problem we find a possibly nontrivial obstacle:

Many people discussing the twin paradox or time may not have an idea what are they talking about.

To be continued...

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brief_history_of_time
[2] Hawking S., A Brief History of Time, Bantam Books London 1998
[3]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_paradox
[4] P.Langevin, Scientia 10 31 (1911).
[5] Einstein A., Dialogue about Objections to the Theory of Relativity Die Naturwissenschaften 6(1918): p 697-702. English Translation in The collected Papers of Albert Einstein vol 7 p 66 Princeton University Press 
[6] http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/nstv/2012/01/physics-in-a-minute-the-twin-paradox.html#.U9LzzHazjZg.blogger