See also
- People: Arthur Eddington Arthur Stanley Eddington, OM, FRS was a British astrophysicist of the early 20th century. The Eddington limit, the natural limit to the luminosity of stars, or the radiation generated by accretion onto a compact object, is named in his honour | Albert Einstein Albert Einstein was an ethnically Jewish, German-born theoretical physicist. He is best known for his theories of special relativity and general relativity. Einstein received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect.". He is often | Hendrik Lorentz Hendrik Antoon Lorentz was a Dutch physicist who shared the 1902 Nobel Prize in Physics with Pieter Zeeman for the discovery and theoretical explanation of the Zeeman effect. He also derived the transformation equations subsequently used by Albert Einstein to describe space and time (--see Relativity priority dispute) | Hermann Minkowski Hermann Minkowski was a German mathematician of Jewish and Polish descent, who created and developed the geometry of numbers and who used geometrical methods to solve difficult problems in number theory, mathematical physics, and the theory of relativity | Bernhard Riemann Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann was an extremely influential German mathematician who made important contributions to analysis and differential geometry, some of them enabling the later development of general relativity | Henri Poincaré Jules Henri Poincaré (French pronunciation: [ˈʒyl ɑ̃ˈʁi pwɛ̃kaˈʁe]) was a French mathematician and theoretical physicist, and a philosopher of science. Poincaré is often described as a polymath, and in mathematics as The Last Universalist, since he excelled in all fields of the discipline as it existed during his lifetime | Alexander MacFarlane Alexander Macfarlane FRSE was a Scottish logician, physicist, and mathematician | Harry Bateman Harry Bateman FRS was an English mathematician | Robert S. Shankland Robert Sherwood Shankland was an American physicist and historian | Walter Ritz Walther Ritz was a Swiss theoretical physicist
- Relativity: Theory of relativity The theory of relativity, or simply relativity, generally refers specifically to two theories of Albert Einstein: special relativity and general relativity. However, the word "relativity" is sometimes used in reference to Galilean invariance | History of special relativity The history of special relativity consists of many theoretical results and empirical findings obtained by Hendrik Lorentz, Henri Poincaré and others. It culminated in the theory of special relativity proposed by Albert Einstein, and subsequent work of Max Planck, Hermann Minkowski and others | principle of relativity In physics, the principle of relativity is the requirement that the equations, describing the laws of physics, have the same form in all admissible frames of reference | general relativity General relativity or the general theory of relativity is the geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1916. It is the current description of gravitation in modern physics. It unifies special relativity and Newton's law of universal gravitation, and describes gravity as a geometric property of space and time, or spacetime | Fundamental Speed The term speed of light generally refers to the speed of light in free space, a fundamental physical constant usually denoted by the symbol c. The metre is defined such that the speed of light in free space is exactly 299,792,458 metres per second . It is the speed of not just visible light, but of all electromagnetic radiation, and it is believed | frame of reference A frame of reference in physics, may refer to a coordinate system or set of axes within which to measure the position, orientation, and other properties of objects in it, or it may refer to an observational reference frame tied to the state of motion of an observer. It may also refer to both an observational reference frame and an attached | inertial frame of reference In physics, an inertial frame of reference is a reference frame, tied to the state of motion of an observer, with the property that each physical law portrays itself in the same form in every inertial frame. The contrasting case is the set of non-inertial frames, in which the laws of physics change from frame to frame, and the usual forces | Lorentz transformations In physics, the Lorentz transformation precisely describes how, according to the theory of special relativity, two observers' varying measurements of space and time can be converted into each other's frame of reference. It reflects the surprising fact that observers moving at different velocities report different distances, passage of time, and in | Bondi k-calculus Bondi k-calculus is a method of teaching special relativity originated by Professor Sir Hermann Bondi, and now common in university and college level physics classes | Einstein synchronisation Einstein synchronisation is a convention in relativity for synchronizing clocks at different places | Rietdijk-Putnam Argument If special relativity is true, then each observer will have their own plane of simultaneity, which contains a unique set of events that constitutes the observer's present moment. Observers moving at different relative velocities have different planes of simultaneity hence different sets of events that are present. Each observer considers their set
- Physics: Newtonian Mechanics In the fields of physics, classical mechanics is one of the two major sub-fields of study in the science of mechanics, which is concerned with the set of physical laws governing and mathematically describing the motions of bodies and aggregates of bodies geometrically distributed within a certain boundary under the action of a system of forces | spacetime In physics, spacetime is any mathematical model that combines space and time into a single continuum. Spacetime is usually interpreted with space being three-dimensional and time playing the role of a fourth dimension that is of a different sort than the spatial dimensions. According to certain Euclidean space perceptions, the universe has three | speed of light The speed of light is a fundamental physical constant of spacetime, the speed at which electromagnetic radiation, including visible light, travels in free space. It is an upper bound on the rate of transfer of matter and information between places. The speed of light is usually denoted by the symbol c | simultaneity Simultaneity is the property of two events happening at the same time in at least one reference frame | physical cosmology Physical cosmology, as a branch of astronomy, is the study of the largest-scale structures and dynamics of our universe and is concerned with fundamental questions about its formation and evolution. Cosmology involves itself with studying the motions of the celestial bodies and the first cause. For most of human history, it has been a branch of | Doppler effect The Doppler effect , named after Austrian physicist Christian Doppler who proposed it in 1842, is the change in frequency of a wave for an observer moving relative to the source of the waves. It is commonly heard when a vehicle sounding a siren approaches, passes and recedes from an observer. The received frequency is increased (compared to the | relativistic Euler equations In fluid mechanics and astrophysics, the relativistic Euler equations are a generalization of the Euler equations that account for the effects of special relativity | Aether drag hypothesis According to the aether drag hypothesis light propagates in a special medium, the aether, that remains attached to things as they move. If this is the case then, no matter how fast the earth moves around the sun or rotates on its axis, light on the surface of the earth would travel at a constant velocity | Lorentz ether theory What is now called Lorentz Ether theory has its roots in Hendrik Lorentz's "Theory of electrons", which was the final point in the development of the classical aether theories at the end of the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th century. An extension of the theory was developed in particular by Henri Poincaré, who coined the name & | Moving magnet and conductor problem The moving magnet and conductor problem is a famous thought experiment, originating in the 19th century, concerning the intersection of classical electromagnetism and special relativity. In it, the current in a conductor moving with constant velocity, v, with respect to a magnet is calculated in the frame of reference of the magnet and in the | Shape waves Shape waves are excitations propagating along Josephson vortices or fluxons. In the case of two-dimensional Josephson junctions described by the 2D sine-Gordon equation, shape waves are distortions of a Josephson vortex line of an arbitrary profile. Shape waves have remarkable properties exhibiting Lorentz contraction and time dilation similar to| Relativistic heat conduction The theory of Relativistic Heat Conduction claims to be the only model for heat conduction (and similar diffusion processes) that is compatible with the theory of special relativity, the second law of thermodynamics, electrodynamics, and quantum mechanics, simultaneously. The main features of RHC are:
- Maths: Minkowski space In physics and mathematics, Minkowski space is the mathematical setting in which Einstein's theory of special relativity is most conveniently formulated. In this setting the three ordinary dimensions of space are combined with a single dimension of time to form a four-dimensional manifold for representing a spacetime. Minkowski space is named | four-vector In the theory of relativity, a four-vector is a vector in a four-dimensional real vector space, called Minkowski space. It differs from a vector in that it can be transformed by Lorentz transformations. The usage of the four-vector name tacitly assumes that its components refer to a standard basis. The components transform between these bases as | world line In physics, the world line of an object is the unique path of that object as it travels through 4-dimensional spacetime. The concept of "world line" is distinguished from the concept of "orbit" or "trajectory" by the time dimension, and typically encompasses a large area of spacetime wherein perceptually straight | light cone A Light cone is the path that a flash of light would take through spacetime. As time progresses, the light from the flash spreads out in a circle, and the result is a cone. In reality, there are three space dimensions, so the light actually forms a sphere in space, and the light cone is actually a fourth dimensional shape, but it's much easier to | Lorentz group In physics , the Lorentz group is the group of all Lorentz transformations of Minkowski spacetime, the classical setting for all (nongravitational) physical phenomena. The mathematical form of | Poincaré group In physics and mathematics, the Poincaré group, named after Henri Poincaré, is the group of isometries of Minkowski spacetime. It is a 10-dimensional noncompact Lie group. The abelian group of translations is a normal subgroup while the Lorentz group is a subgroup, the stabilizer of a point. That is, the full Poincaré group is the affine group | geometry Geometry is a part of mathematics concerned with questions of size, shape, and relative position of figures and with properties of space. Geometry is one of the oldest sciences. Initially a body of practical knowledge concerning lengths, areas, and volumes, in the third century BC geometry was put into an axiomatic form by Euclid, whose treatment | tensors In mathematics, a tensor is a certain kind of geometrical entity and array concept. It generalizes the concepts of scalar, vector and linear operator, in a way that is independent of any chosen frame of reference. For example, doing rotations over axis does not affect at all the properties of tensors, if a transformation law is followed. Tensors | split-complex number In abstract algebra, the split-complex numbers are a two-dimensional commutative algebra over the real numbers different from the complex numbers. Every split-complex number has the form | Relativity in the APS formalism In physics, the algebra of physical space is the Clifford or geometric algebra Cl3 of the three-dimensional Euclidean space, with emphasis in its paravector structure
- Philosophy: actualism The denial of actualism is possibilism, the thesis that there are some entities that are merely possible: these entities exist but are not to be found in the actual world. One famous version of possibilism is David Lewis's modal realism | conventionalism Conventionalism is the philosophical attitude that fundamental principles of a certain kind are grounded on agreements in society, rather than on external reality.[citation needed] Although this attitude is commonly held with respect to the rules of grammar, its application to the propositions of ethics, law, science, mathematics, and logic is | formalism It can refer to a set of beliefs in philosophy, art, literature, or music
<<Table of Contents Special relativity (also known as the special theory of relativity or STR) is the physical theory of measurement in inertial frames of reference proposed in 1905 by Albert Einstein (after the considerable and independent contributions of Hendrik Lorentz, Henri Poincaré and others) in the paper "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" | Next>> | Show All>>
