Related papers: Special Relativity: Scientific or Philosophical Th…
.This article reexamines the genesis of special relativity by situating the contributions of Lorentz, Poincare, and Einstein within the scientific, documentary, and editorial context of the years 1895--1913. It emphasizes the rapid…
This article is a partly pedagogical, partly historical and partly technical review of special relativity and its experimental foundations, in honor of the centenary of Einstein's annus mirabilis.
This work analyzes the difficulties in learning and teaching Einstein's theory of special relativity. An extensive bibliographic review has been performed, considering articles published in the most relevant journals on science education,…
The relation between the special relativity and quantum mechanics is discussed. Based on the postulate that space-time inversion is equavalent to particle-antiparticle transformation, the essence of special relativity is explored and the…
Einstein's distinction between principle theories and constructive theories is methodological rather than metaphysical. Principle theories such as thermodynamics and relativity articulate empirically distilled constraints that delimit…
Special relativity is no longer a new revolutionary theory but a firmly established cornerstone of modern physics. The teaching of special relativity, however, still follows its presentation as it unfolded historically, trying to convince…
We present three natural but distinct formalisations of Einstein's special principle of relativity, and demonstrate the relationships between them. In particular, we prove that they are logically distinct, but that they can be made…
The nature of gravity is fundamental to understand the scaffolding of the Universe and its evolution. Einstein's general theory of relativity has been scrutinized for over ninety five years and shown to describe accurately all phenomena…
Double Special Relativity theories are the relativistic theories in which the transformations between inertial observers are characterized by two observer-independent scales of the light speed and the Planck length. We study two main…
Einstein's general theory of relativity is the standard theory of gravity, especially where the needs of astronomy, astrophysics, cosmology and fundamental physics are concerned. As such, this theory is used for many practical purposes…
We review the physics at the end of the nineteenth century and summarize the process of the establishment of Special Relativity by Albert Einstein in brief. Following in the giant's footsteps, we outline the scientific method which helps to…
There is no doubt that both the special and general theories of relativity capture the imagination. The anti-intuitive properties of the special theory of relativity and its deep philosophical implications, the bizzare and dazzling…
Though Einstein and other physicists recognized the importance of an observer being at rest in an inertial reference frame for the special theory of relativity, the supporting psychological structures were not discussed much by physicists.…
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…
Einstein claimed that the fundamental dynamical insight of special relativity was the equivalence of mass and energy. I disagree. Not only are mass and energy not equivalent (whatever exactly that means) but talk of such equivalence…
In the line of thought of Einstein's 1905 paper on relativity, I get a physical derivation of Lorentz transformation (LT) answering its main criticism and considerably enlarging the area of applications of the theory of relativity.
Simply by assuming the first postulate of Special Relativity and by exploring Gedankenexperiments with electromagnetic forces, we suggest that there is a speed limit in the universe, which can be determined as a relation between vacuum…
Einstein's argument on the relativity of simultaneity itself is the first result of the special theory of relativity. The nature of this result is explored, and implications of this result for the structure and functioning of the physical…
Experiments may not reveal their full import at the time that they are performed. The scientists who perform them usually are testing a specific hypothesis and quite often have specific expectations limiting the possible inferences that can…
Special relativity beyond its basic treatment can be inaccessible, in particular because introductory physics courses typically view special relativity as decontextualized from the rest of physics. We seek to place special relativity back…