相关论文: Relativity for Retired Engineers

Theory of Relativity (Special and General) is one of the most influential theories of the 20th century and has changed the way we view the world. It is part of many undergraduate curriculums and it is often suggested that it should be…

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…

A phenomenological explanation is presented for the physics of aberration, which is in contrast with special relativity physics. The effect of relativity is identified with an effect due to the velocity of observation being affected by the…

Fifteen misconceptions involving Relativity, Gravitation and Cosmology are exposed, along with corrections

The idea of quantum relativity as a generalized, or rather deformed, version of Einstein (special) relativity has been taking shape in recent years. Following the perspective of deformations, while staying within the framework of Lie…

We live at a time of contradictory messages about how successfully we understand gravity. General Relativity seems to work very well in the Earth's immediate neighborhood, but arguments abound that it needs modification at very small and/or…

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…

Nature succeeds in accelerating extended and massive objects to relativistic velocities. Jets in Active Galactic Nuclei and in galactic superluminal sources and gamma-ray bursts fireballs have bulk Lorentz factors from a few to several…

In the framework of special relativity, all particles are point-like or string-like. This nature of particles has caused the divergence difficulties in quantum field, string and superstring theories. In the framework of special relativity,…

Some of the assumptions of cosmology, as based on the simplest version of General Relativity, are discussed. It is argued that by slight modifications of standard gravitation theory, our notion of the sources of gravity {the right hand side…

The possibility to have a deviation from relativistic quantum field theory requiring to go beyond effective field theories is discussed. A few recent attempts to go in this direction both at the theoretical and phenomenological levels are…

A derivation of the relative velocity used in the definition of the relativistic cross-section is given in terms of manifestly Lorentz invariant quantities. Along the way we find that there is a certain arbitrariness in the usual definition…

General relativity provides an appropriate framework for addressing the issue of sub- or superluminality as an apparent effect. Even though a massless particle travels on the light cone, its average velocity over a finite path measured by…

In this lecture I build up the motivation for relativity and gravitation based on general principles and common sense considerations which should fall in the sphere of appreciation of a general reader. There is a novel way of looking at…

It is generally admitted in thermodynamics that, for a given change in volume, the work done by a system is greater in conditions of reversibility than in conditions of irreversibility. If the basic conventions of physics are strictly…

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 paper constitutes a background to the paper 'Quantum mechanics as "space-time statistical mechanics"?', arXiv:quant-ph/0501133, presented previously by the author. But it is also a free-standing and self-contained paper. The purpose of…

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.

General relativity's successes and limitations are compared to those of special relativity.

The author thinks that the main ideas or Relativity Theory can be explained to children (around the age of 15 or 16) without complicated calculations, by using very simple arguments of affine geometry. The proposed approach is presented as…