Related papers: On the origin of Special Relativity
This is an English translation of the Italian version of an encyclopedia chapter that appeared in the Italian Encyclopedia of the Physical Sciences, edited by Bruno Bertotti (1994). Following requests from colleagues we have decided to make…
The nature of space-time and surrounding matter objects was and persists to be a one of the most intriguing and challenging problems facing the mankind and natural scientists especially. As we know one of the most brilliant inventions in…
Special relativity is foundation of many branches of modern physics, of which theoretical results are far beyond our daily experience and hard to realized in kinematic experiments. However, its outcomes could be demonstrated by making use…
The special theory of relativity has fundamentally changed our views of space and time. The relativity of simultaneity in particular, and the theory of relativity as a whole, still presents significant difficulty for beginners in the…
It is universally believed that with his 1905 paper "Does the inertia of a body depend on its energy content?" Einstein first demonstrated the equivalence of mass and energy by making use of his special theory of relativity. In the final…
The foundations of Einstein's first (1907) principle of equivalence are explored and their consequences are stated in terms of invariance under generalized Lorentz transformations, first explored by Hessenberg.
While Special and General Relativity are well known by a very large number of people, Einstein's religious convinctions are almost ignored. The paper focuses on what was his view about immortality. Einstein believed in Spinoza's view of God…
In the post-Maxwellian era, sensing that the tide of discoveries in electromagnetim indicated a decline of the mechanical view, Einstein replaced Newton's three absolutes -- space, time and mass, with a single one, the velocity of light.…
A paradox associated with the astrophysical Poynting-Robertson effect is presented. The paradox arises when relativity theory and Mie's solution of Maxwell's equations are confronted with the statements on the Poynting-Robertson effect.…
Most early twentieth century relativists --- Lorentz, Einstein, Eddington, for examples --- claimed that general relativity was merely a theory of the aether. We shall confirm this claim by deriving the Einstein equations using aether…
This review is made of two parts which are related to Poincar\'e in different ways. The first part reviews the work of Poincar\'e on the Theory of (Special) Relativity. One emphasizes both the remarkable achievements of Poincar\'e, and the…
In 1922 the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) Council approved a motion to send an invitation to Albert Einstein to visit Argentina and give a course of lectures on his theory of relativity. The motion was proposed by Jorge Duclout…
This is a semipopular introduction to the Special and General Theory of Relativity, with special emphasis on the geometrical aspects of both theories and their physical implications.
I provide a very brief sketch of some of Dirac's interests and work in gravity, particularly his Hamiltonian formulation of Einstein's theory and its relation to his earlier research.
In his monumental discoveries, the driving force for Einstein was, I believe, consistency of concept and principle rather than conflict with experiment. In this spirit, I would like to look at the journey from the classical to the…
A thought experiment first proposed by Sartori is analysed using the parallel velocity addition formula of special relativity. The distances and proper-time intervals between some similarly defined spatial coincidence events are found to be…
We start from the well-known form of the interval of the special relativity, stare it, and build up an attempt to implement the causality from it. Some features appear to be new, they involve the mass of the particle and the structure of…
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…
Einstein is usually revered as the father of special and general relativity. In this article I demonstrate that he is also the father of Solid State Physics, or even his broader version known as Condensed Matter Physics (including liquids).…
In 1919 A. Einstein suspected first that gravitational fields could play an essential role in the structure of elementary particles. In 1937, P.A.M. Dirac found a miraculous link between the properties of the visible Universe and elementary…