Related papers: Poincare and Special Relativity
The concepts of primary and reciprocal experiments and base and travelling frames in special relativity are concisely described and applied to several different space-time experiments. These include Einstein's train/embankment thought…
A detailed re-examination of the seminal paper on special relativity, taking into account recent work on the physical interpretation of the space-time Lorentz transformation as well as the modern understanding of classical elecromagnetism…
Henri Poincar\'e formulated the mathematics of Lorentz transformations, known as the Poincar\'e group. He also formulated the Poincar\'e sphere for polarization optics. It is shown that these two mathematical instruments can be derived from…
Physics was in crisis at the beginning of the twentieth century because the newborn Maxwell's electromagnetism defied mechanistic preconceptions. Albert Einstein understood that the solution to the crisis required an audacious reworking of…
A century after its formulation by Einstein, it is time to incorporate special relativity early in the physics curriculum. The approach advocated here employs a simple algebraic extension of vector formalism that generates Minkowski…
In his Autobiographical Notes, Einstein mentioned that on his road to the final theory of general relativity it was a major difficulty to accustom himself to the idea that coordinates need not possess an immediate physical meaning in terms…
Einstein distinguished between ``principle'' and ``constructive'' theories in physics, and although he thought the latter were more explanatory than the former, he regarded his 1905 formulation of special relativity theory as a principle…
Einstein's Theory of General Relativity was formulated as a gauge theory of Lorentz symmetry by Utiyama in 1956, while the Einstein-Cartan gravitational theory was formulated by Kibble in 1961 as the gauge theory of Poincare…
When Einstein formulated his special relativity in 1905, he established the law of Lorentz transformations for point particles. It is now known that particles have internal space-time structures. Particles, such as photons and electrons,…
With his General Theory of Relativity, Albert Einstein produced a revolution in our conception of reality and of the knowledge we can obtain from it. This revolution can be viewed from philosophy as leading to one of the great paradigms in…
The starting point of the theory of Special Relativity$^1$ is the Lorentz transformation, which in essence describes the lack of absolute measurements of space and time. These effects came about when one applies the Second Relativity…
This paper will attempt to show that the Doppler principle was of major relevance to Einstein for the genesis of the special theory of relativity.
This paper is devoted to Poincar\'e's work in probability. Though the subject does not represent a large part of the mathematician's achievements, it provides significant insight into the evolution of Poincar\'e's thought on several…
As shown by the development of Special Relativity the simultaneity concept should be related to that of reference frame. Poincare' proposed to define the simultaneity of two events by means of light signals following what is nowadays known…
This paper examines Lorentz's 1895 derivations of the classical Doppler formula and Fresnel drag, Einstein's 1905 derivation of the relativistic Doppler effect and aberration, and Einstein's 1907 kinematical route to the exact velocity…
Both Poincar\'e in his 1900 Festschrift paper \cite{Poincare} and Einstein in his 1905 \textsl{Annalen der Physik} article \cite{Einstein} were led to $E=mc^2$ by considering electromagnetic processes taking place in vacuo. Poincar\'e's…
In the history of physics 1905 can be considered as the year of Einstein's proclamation of independence of events. Indeed the concept of independent events occupies a essential place in the three main 1905 Einstein's papers (quanta of…
Many professional physicists do not fully understand the implications of the Einstein equivalence principle of general relativity. Consequently, many are unaware of the fact that special relativity is fully capable of handling accelerated…
Einstein regarded as one of the triumphs of his 1915 theory of gravity --- the general theory of relativity --- that it vindicated the action--reaction principle, while Newtonian mechanics as well as his 1905 special theory of relativity…
While Special and General Relativity are well known by a very large number of people, Einstein's religious convinctions are almost ignored. The paper focuses on what was his view about immortality. Einstein believed in Spinoza's view of God…