Related papers: Special Relativity: A Centenary Perspective
We attempt to see how closely we can formally obtain the planetary and light path equations of General Relativity by employing certain operations on the familiar Newtonian equation. This article is intended neither as an alternative to nor…
Real Time Relativity is a computer program that lets students fly at relativistic speeds though a simulated world populated with planets, clocks, and buildings. The counterintuitive and spectacular optical effects of relativity are…
This paper completes a three-part study of Einstein's 1905 special relativity by reconstructing the experimental pressures that shaped his thinking from 1895 to June 1905. Following Stachel's historiographical line, I trace Einstein's path…
This review aims to provide a very short and pedestrian introduction to some of the basics of extra-dimensional physics. The hope is to facilitate access and to be, in some respects, complementary to the many already existing reviews on…
This chapter sets the stage for the rest of the book by exploring the role of intuition as a tool to deepen understanding in Einsteinian physics. Drawing on examples from the history of general relativity, we argue that the development of…
This note examines an apparently unpublished manuscript on special relativity written by Conrad Habicht in 1914 and made available online by the ETH-Bibliothek Z\"urich in December 2024. To the best of my knowledge, no study of its content…
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 concept of an objective spatial direction in special relativity is investigated and theories assuming light-speed isotropy while accepting the existence of a privileged spatial direction are classified. A natural generalization of the…
This paper, which is dedicated to Alan Turing on the 50th anniversary of his death, gives an overview and discusses the philosophical implications of incompleteness, uncomputability and randomness.
We present a perspective of strange quark matter research in the 1991-2001 decade focused on astrophysics topics, with particular attention to open problems. We outline the basic concepts and developments in the field, paying attention to…
The confrontation between Einstein's theory of gravitation and experiment is summarized. Although all current experimental data are compatible with general relativity, the importance of pursuing the quest for possible deviations from…
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…
The 75th anniversary of Turing's seminal paper and his centennial year anniversary occur in 2011 and 2012, respectively. It is natural to review and assess Turing's contributions in diverse fields in the light of new developments that his…
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…
The objective of this paper is not simply to present an historical overview of Einstein's cosmological considerations, but to discuss the central role they played in shaping the paradigm of relativistic cosmology. This, we'll show, was a…
Simple physical models of a measuring rod and of a clock are used to demonstrate the contraction of objects and clock retardation in special relativity. It is argued that the models could help in promoting student understanding of special…
This document gathers the notes of a 30-hour review course on gravitation, which I delivered in January 2018 and January 2019 at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences of Cameroon (AIMS-Cameroon). Its main goal is to propose a big…
I review the conceptual, algebraical, and geometrical structure of Doubly Special Relativity. I also speculate about the possible relevance of DSR for quantum gravity phenomenology.
The theoretical framework of electromagnetism played a foundational role in Einstein's development of special relativity. To support conceptual understanding, we present a fully special relativistic computer simulation that visualizes…
Black holes are among the most extreme objects that can be found in the Universe and an ideal laboratory for testing fundamental physics. This article will briefly review the basic properties of black holes as expected from general…