Related papers: An omission in Special Relativity
The Principle of Relativity has so far been understood as the {\it covariance} of laws of Physics with respect to a general class of reference frame transformations. That relativity, however, has only been expressed with the help of {\it…
The goal of this lecture is to introduce the student to the theory of Special Relativity. Not to overload the content with mathematics, the author will stick to the simplest cases; in particular only reference frames using Cartesian…
A reference frame consists of: a reference space, a time scale and a spatial metric. The geometric structure induced by these objects in spacetime is developed. The existence of a class of spatial metrics that are rigid, have free mobility…
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…
Under the assumption of closed-path velocity of light invariant, we show both the general expression of velocity of light in an ordinary inertial reference frame and the generalized Lorentz transformation between the ordinary inertial…
We study the question of whether two frames of a given physical theory are equivalent or not in the presence of quantum corrections. By using field theory arguments we claim that equivalence is broken in the presence of anomalous symmetries…
This article suggests that thinking about the role of reference frames can provide new insight into Extended Wigner's Friend scenarios. This involves appealing to symmetries to make a principled distinction between properties of a system…
In this article, we present several apparent paradoxes of special relativity and their respective solutions. These paradoxes have appeared since the advent of relativity in 1905, and in fact they are never paradoxes. From a didactic point…
There is a review of what is known about global non-inertial frames in special and general relativity.
In the classification of real singularities by Arnold et al. (1985), normal forms, as representatives of equivalence classes under right equivalence, are not always uniquely determined. We describe the complete structure of the equivalence…
This article reports on an investigation of student understanding of the concept of time in special relativity. A series of research tasks are discussed that illustrate, step-by-step, how student reasoning of fundamental concepts of…
Observers at rest in two inertial reference frames are located within the propagation space of the same electromagnetic wave. Raising receiving antennas in a suitable way, these observers use the electromagnetic oscillations in the wave as…
This paper, which is meant to be a tribute to Minkowski's geometrical insight, rests on the idea that the basic observed symmetries of spacetime homogeneity and of isotropy of space, which are displayed by the spacetime manifold in the…
Harmonic frames of prime order are investigated. The primary focus is the enumeration of inequivalent harmonic frames, with the exact number given by a recursive formula. The key to this result is a one-to-one correspondence developed…
In this paper a new concept related to the frame theory is introduced; the notion of pair frame. By investigating some properties of such frames, it is shown that pair frames are a generalization of ordinary frames. Some classes of of them…
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…
The modern view, that there exists a preferred frame of reference related to the cosmic microwave background (CMB), is in apparent contradiction with the principles of special relativity. The purpose of the present study is to develop a…
For the special theory of relativity, the normalization problem is formulated as the question how observers in constant relative motion may reach an agreement on space and time scales. As the normalization problem does not receive a…
Two common misconceptions about the theory of Special Relativity that are actively taught in textbooks are discussed. It is shown, first, that the Lorentz transformations are actually transformations of the coordinates of a photon, not the…
We conclude that Special relativity effects are caused by a period of acceleration in the past, before they are measure in uniform velocity. This can be regarded as extension of the equivalence principle of General Relativity.We define the…