Related papers: Relational Relativity
We try to lay down the foundations of a Newtonian theory where inertia and gravitational fields appear in a unified way aiming to reach a better understanding of the general relativistic theory. We also formulate a kind of equivalence…
Arguments are reviewed and extended in favor of presenting special relativity at least in part from a more mechanistic point of view. A number of generic mechanisms are catalogued and illustrated with the goal of making relativistic effects…
Absolute space is eliminated from the body of mechanics by gauging translations and rotations in the Lagrangian of a classical system. The procedure implies the addition of compensating terms to the kinetic energy, in such a way that the…
General relativity and quantum mechanics have both revealed the relativity of certain notions that were previously thought to be absolute. I clarify the precise sense in which these theories are relational, and I argue that the various…
Quantizing the gravitational field described by General relativity being a notorious difficult, unsolved and maybe meaningless problem I use in this essay a different strategy: I consider a linear theory in the framework of Special…
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 model of a universe with a preferred frame, which nevertheless shares the main properties with traditional special and general relativity theories, is considered. We adopt Mach's interpretation of inertia and show that the energy…
Relying on a fundamental empirical identity of heavy and inertial mass it is proposed to bring a status of general theory of relativity (GTR) of Einstein up to a level of Unified Field Theory. To do this, a thoroughgoing revision of…
The complex relationship between Einstein's second postulate and the Maxwell electromagnetic theory is elucidated. A simple deduction of the main results of the Ignatowski approach to the theory of relativity is given. The peculiar status…
Different formulations of special relativity are theoretically discussed. First an invariant formulation, i.e., the ''true transformations (TT) relativity,'' is exposed. There a physical quantity is represented by a true tensor which…
In a purely relational theory there exists a tension between the relational character of the theory and the existence of quantities like distance and duration. We review this issue in the context of the Leibniz-Clarke correspondence. We…
The theory of gravitation field within the special theory of relativity is analyzed.
We summarize the main ideas of General Relativity and Lorentzian geometry, leading to a proof of the simplest of the celebrated Hawking-Penrose singularity theorems. The reader is assumed to be familiar with Riemannian geometry and point…
An ontology of Leibnizian relationalism, consisting in distance relations among sparse matter points and their change only, is well recognized as a serious option in the context of classical mechanics. In this paper, we investigate how this…
Quantum theory can be understood as pointing to an ontology of relations. I observe that this reading of quantum mechanics is supported by the ubiquity of relationality in contemporary fundamental physics, including in classical mechanics,…
The development of both special and general relativity is accomplished in a series of 6 papers using a simple approach. The purpose is to explain the how and why of relativity to a broad public, and to be useful for students of physics by…
Special relativity, the symmetry breakdown in the electroweak standard model, and the dichotomy of the spacetime related transformations with the Lorentz group, on the one side, and the chargelike transformations with the hypercharge and…
The theory of Space rotations is introduced. The relativity principle is generalized to satisfy to reference frames rotating in 3D space. It is shown that the most postulates and limitations of quantum theories are consequences of this…
The theory of measurement is employed to elucidate the physical basis of general relativity. For measurements involving phenomena with intrinsic length or time scales, such scales must in general be negligible compared to the (translational…
In the special theory of relativity, Lorentz invariance is extended in Minkowski spacetime from ideal inertial observers to actual observers by means of the hypothesis of locality, which postulates that accelerated observers are always…