Abstract
This chapter outlines special relativity with emphasis on its notions of time, space, spacetime, frames, observers, clocks and ‘rods’ (including other length-measuring devices such as interferometers). Alongside introducing the laws of physics that the rest of the book works with, these are the focal topics of our preamble chapters 1 to 8. These chapters jointly provide detailed lists of temporal concepts and properties, along with the extent to which these are realized in each accepted paradigm of physics. The current chapter on special relativity concentrates in particular on
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A)
how time and these other focal notions differ from the Newtonian paradigm’s, in particular as regards simultaneity, causality and the joint geometrization of space and time as spacetime.
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B)
That, none the less, passage from the Newtonian paradigm to the special relativistic one involves trading one set of absolute structures for another; it is general relativity, rather, which frees physics from absolute structures.
This chapter also contains this book’s Newtonian and special-relativistic exercises.
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Notes
- 1.
See also Fig. 4.1 in this regard.
- 2.
This is using the \([ct, \underline{x}]\) version of dimensionally-homogeneous coordinates.
- 3.
Time reflections are usually physically undesirable. Space reflections are usually included (see Appendix E).
- 4.
[ ] denotes antisymmetrization of the enclosed indices and ( ) denotes symmetrization.
- 5.
Since this occurred in 1905, we mean all the other classical laws of Nature known at that point.
- 6.
This is the European continuation of the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) project: an upcoming space mission to probe for gravitational waves; see Chap. 7 for more.)
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Anderson, E. (2017). Time, Space, Spacetime and Laws in Special Relativity. In: The Problem of Time. Fundamental Theories of Physics, vol 190. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58848-3_4
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