Related papers: Kinematics grounded on light
Kantian philosophy of space, time and gravity is significantly affected in three ways by particle physics. First, particle physics deflects Schlick's General Relativity-based critique of synthetic a priori knowledge. Schlick argued that…
A priority of physics instruction is to help students make the connection between the formulae they think they are required to memorize and the real world in which they interact every day. If you ask students to describe a situation in real…
There has been a recent stimulus in the study of alternative theories of gravity lately, mostly triggered from combined motivation coming from cosmology/astrophysics and high energy physics. Among the proposed theories, one that has…
One of the major difficulties in learning physics is for students to develop a conceptual understanding of the core concepts of physics. Many authors have argued that student conceptions of basic physical phenomena are rooted in basic…
We review the foundations of Einstein's general theory of relativity, discuss recent progress in the tests of relativistic gravity, and present motivations for new generation of high-accuracy gravitational experiments. We discuss the…
The most general form of transformations of spacetime coordinates in Special Theory of Relativity based solely on physical assumptions are described. Only the linearity of spacetime transformations and the constancy of the speed of light…
While it is generally agreed that the nature of spacetime must be drastically different at the Planck scale, it has been a common practice to assume that spacetime is endowed with a full pseudo-Riemannian geometry regardless of the physical…
Influence theory is a foundational theory of physics that is not based on traditional empirically defined concepts, such as positions in space and time, mass, energy, or momentum. Instead, the aim is to derive these concepts, and their…
A modest aim of this pedagogical presentation is to analyze, critically, certain fundamental physical concepts to illustrate the physical principles behind the special theory of relativity and, hence, to also illustrate the limitations of…
The definition of a reference frame in General Relativity is achieved through the construction of a congruence of time-like world-lines. In this framework, splitting techniques enable us to express physical phenomena in analogy with Special…
We lay down the foundations of particle dynamics in mechanical theories that satisfy the relativity principle and whose kinematics can be formulated employing reference frames of the type usually adopted in special relativity. Such…
We first see that the inertia of Newtonian mechanics is absolute and troublesome. General relativity can be viewed as Einstein's attempt to remedy, by making inertia relative, to matter---perhaps imperfectly though, as at least a couple of…
In this work, Einstein's view of geometry as physical geometry is taken into account in the analysis of diverse issues related to the notions of inertial motion and inertial reference frame. Einstein's physical geometry enables a…
General relativity is applied to the strong interaction; the nexus between the two being arrived at by constructing a line element having the Yukawa form, which is used to describe geometrically the classical dynamics of a particle moving…
Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity was proposed a little over a hundred years back. It remained a bedrock of twentieth century physics right up to Quantum Field Theory. However, the failure over several decades to provide a unified…
The physical world is quantum. However, our description of the quantum physics still relies much on concepts in classical physics and in some cases with `quantized' interpretations. The most important case example is that of spacetime. We…
Riemannian geometry is a mathematical field which has been the cornerstone of revolutionary scientific discoveries such as the theory of general relativity. Despite early uses in robot design and recent applications for exploiting data with…
Many physicists, following Einstein, believe that the ultimate aim of theoretical physics is to find a unified theory of all interactions which would not depend on any free dimensionless constant, i.e., a dimensionless constant that is only…
When a mountaineer is ascending one of the great peaks of the Himalayas she knows that an entirely new vista awaits her at the top, whose ramifications will be known only after she gets there. Her immediate goal though, is to tackle the…
The Einsteinian Theory of Gravitation ("General Theory of Relativity") is founded essentially; on the reception that the geometrical properties of the 4-dimensional space-time continuum are defined from the matter in it. Contrary to this,…