Related papers: Internal Space-time Symmetries according to Einste…
Gell-Mann's quarks are coherent particles confined within a hadron at rest, but Feynman's partons are incoherent particles which constitute a hadron moving with a velocity close to that of light. It is widely believed that the quark model…
Contrary to what is often stated, a fundamental spacetime discreteness need not contradict Lorentz invariance. A causal set's discreteness is in fact locally Lorentz invariant, and we recall the reasons why. For illustration, we introduce a…
The theory of special relativity can be generalized by means of a new principle called Conservation of Information. This allows a derivation of the constancy of the velocity of light with respect to moving frames, and, consequently, of…
The apparent Lorentz invariance of the laws of physics does not imply that space-time is indeed minkowskian. Matter made of solutions of Lorentz-invariant equations would feel a relativistic space-time even if the actual space-time had a…
Special relativity was discovered at the eve of the century, but finds its roots in the 19th century efforts to understand the optics and electromagnetism of moving bodies. These roots are reviewed in Parts 1 and 2, the latter being…
On the basis of the relativistic symmetry of Minkowski space, we derive a Lorentz invariant equation for a spread electron. This equation slightly differs from the Dirac equation and includes additional terms originating from the spread of…
Lorentz invariance belongs to the fundamental symmetries of nature. It is basic for the successful Standard Model of Particle Physics. Nevertheless, within the last decades, Lorentz invariance has been repeatedly questioned. In fact, there…
The constancy of light speed is a basic assumption in Einstein's special relativity, and consequently the Lorentz invariance is a fundamental symmetry of space-time in modern physics. However, it is speculated that the speed of light…
Recently Einstein's invariance of the phase of a plane wave (1905) has been described as "questionable" (Huang). Another definition of this phase, taking into account a "relativistically induced optical anisotropy" for isotropic medium in…
There are gauge-transformation operators applicable to massless spin-1/2 particles within the little-group framework of internal space-time symmetries of massive and massless particles. It is shown that two of the $SL(2,c)$ spinors are…
Quantum operators of coordinates and momentum components of a particle in Minkowski space-time belong to a noncommutative algebra and give rise to a quantum phase space. Under some constraints, in particular, the Lorentz invariance…
We show that the image by the Lorentz transformation of a spherical (circular) light wave, emitted by a moving source, is not a spherical (circular) light wave but an ellipsoidal (elliptical) light wave. Poincare's ellipsoid (ellipse) is…
The starting point of this work is the axiomatic existence of a smallest measurable interval, viz. the Planck time $t_P$, set by quantum fluctuations in the vacuum metric tensor. By the Relativity Principle, the same limit must then apply…
The foundations of Einstein's first (1907) principle of equivalence are explored and their consequences are stated in terms of invariance under generalized Lorentz transformations, first explored by Hessenberg.
We review the experimental evidence for Einstein's special and general relativity. A variety of high precision null experiments verify the weak equivalence principle and local Lorentz invariance, while gravitational redshift and other clock…
Owing to the existence of an invariant length at the Planck scale, Einstein special relativity breaks down at that scale. A possible solution to this problem is arguably to replace the Poincar\'e invariant Einstein special relativity by a…
We show that the Lorentz transformations for the space-time coordinates of the same event are a direct consequence of the principle of relativity and of Einstein's distant clocks synchronization procedure. In our approach, imposing the…
Minkowski famously introduced the concept of a space-time continuum in 1908, merging the three dimensions of space with an imaginary time dimension $ i c t $, with the unit imaginary producing the correct spacetime distance $ x^2 - c^2 t^2…
In the past decade the phenomenology of quantum gravity has been dominated by the search of violations of Lorentz invariance. However, there are very serious arguments that led us to assume that this invariance is a symmetry in Nature. This…
A quantum gravity theory which becomes renormalizable at short distances due to a spontaneous symmetry breaking of Lorentz invariance and diffeomorphism invariance is studied. A breaking of Lorentz invariance with the breaking patterns…