The Red Queen visits Minkowski Space
Physics Education
2015-06-26 v1 General Physics
Abstract
When Alice went `Through the Looking Glass' [1], she found herself in a situation where she had to run as fast as she could in order to stay still. In accordance with the dictum that truth is stranger than fiction, we will see that it is possible to find a situation in special relativity where running towards one's target is actually counter-productive. Although the situation is easily analysed algebraically, the qualitative properties of the analysis are greatly illuminated by the use of space-time diagrams.
Cite
@article{arxiv.physics/0610190,
title = {The Red Queen visits Minkowski Space},
author = {Robert J Low},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:physics/0610190},
year = {2015}
}