Questions tagged [relativity-theory]
For questions regarding either the special or general theories of relativity.
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How did Mach's view on spacetime differ from Einstein's?
We can read in Wikipedia:
Mach's principle, in cosmology, hypothesis that the inertial forces experienced by a body in nonuniform motion are determined by the quantity and distribution of matter in ...
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38 views
Why can't it be said that Lorentz invented Special Relativity? [duplicate]
It is well known that Lorenz found the transformations of space and time to account for the observations made by Michelson and Morley. Before their experiments, an absolute aether was supposed to ...
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1answer
171 views
Who named Black Hole?
A black hole is a compact region of spacetime where gravity is so strong that nothing, even light, can escape from its event horizon, and, interestingly, Einstein didn't accept this viewpoint. Now, I'...
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101 views
Gravity's Rainbow: An accidental nominal similarity in science and literature?
There is an interesting extension of Einstein's Special Relativity, known as Doubly Special Relativity (presented after 2002) in which there is not only an observer-independent maximum velocity (i.e., ...
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80 views
How did Einstein arrive at the result that mass and energy affect pairs of points in spacetime (the curves joining them)?
I understand that the relationship between the metric tensor* and the four-momentum flux across the surfaces of constant $x^\nu$ coordinate is described by Einstein's field equations. My question is &...
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32 views
Maxwell equations and aether
Were Maxwells equations (in their usual common form) assumed to be valid only in ether frame,in the past? If someone would ask them "In what frame are you writing these equations " ,what ...
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1answer
189 views
What is the history of adding the Clock Hypothesis to Special Relativity?
As far as I understand, Einstein’s original formulation of Special Relativity did not include the Clock Hypothesis, though it was implicitly assumed.
The modern formulation of SR adds a formal ...
3
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1answer
67 views
Books about the development/history of gravitational theory
I am looking for a book about the history of gravitational theory. It should obviously include discussions of Newton, Einstein, and their theories, and hopefully it would include the work of other ...
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31 views
First paper in derived speeds after collision in relativistic dynamics
In the one dimensional relativistic collision, do you know which is the first paper in which the final speeds in terms of initial rates and rest masses are derived? I found the derivation on Wikipedia ...
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3answers
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Why did no one else, except Einstein, work on developing General Relativity between 1905-1915?
Einstein dedicated his time between 1905-1915 to develop general relativity (GR). It seems strange to me that no other physicists attempted to tackle this problem in this ten-year period. After all, ...
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1answer
229 views
Is Hermann Weyl's book “Space, Time, Matter” (1923) on General Relativity still relevant?
I really liked Hermann Weyl's mathematical books and would like to get accustomed to general relativity from his perspective, but wonder if it's still relevant after almost 100 (!) years?
Can this ...
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63 views
Did Arthur Schuster anticipate the equivalence between matter and energy in his speculations about antimatter?
Here Schuster apparently discussed matter and antimatter annihilating each other.
Had anyone suggested before this that matter could be transformed into energy?
(If indeed that is what is implied by ...
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Different versions of mass during early years of special relativity
My question is basically about four different versions of mass from the early years of special relativity when the concept of relativistic mass was acceptable. I'd appreciate it if you try to keep ...
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2answers
190 views
Why did energy-momentum relationship have to wait until 1928 to be established?
This web page shows how to derive energy-momentum relationship, $E_{total}^2=p^{2}c^{2}+\left( mc^{2}\right) ^{2}$, given the following equations. Please note that some sources make a distinction ...
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1answer
196 views
Einstein: 'SR is a theory of invariants, not relativity' — source?
It is occasionally remarked that Einstein was unhappy that SR became referred to as a ‘theory of relativity’, when in his eyes it was, much more importantly, a theory of invariants (Invariantentheorie)...
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1answer
198 views
Were there doubts that Voigt's time dilation was correct rather than Einstein's?
According to Wikipedia's Voigt transformation:
Lorentz did not adopt this transformation, as he found in 1904 that
only the Lorentz contraction corresponds to the principle of
relativity. Since ...
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1answer
199 views
What is a spacetime continuum?
A very common expression I see in pop science is "the spacetime continuum". This expression isn't commonly used in modern discussions of general relativity, but looking at some older papers on the ...
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0answers
254 views
First paper introducing the concept of four-vectors
I'm trying to find the first paper in which the concept of four-vectors was introduced. I read "Principle of Relativity" by H. Minkowski but he only presents the notion of metric and invariant space-...
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35 views
Were Christoffel symbols used by Riemann?
The answer to the question would appear to be "no" looking at the transcription of Riemann's 1854 Ueber die Hypothesen, welche der Geometrie zu Grunde liegen lecture. However, Bernhard Riemann (1826-...
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1answer
97 views
What was the original reason physicists first believed that light must follow a geodesic?
Context: One of the key reasons Einstein first suspected space is curved by mass is due to the falling elevator thought experiment. This experiment implies that mass must curve the path of a light ray....
3
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1answer
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Einstein praising Sophus Lie
p. 153 of
Raúl M. Falcón Ganfornina and Juan Núñez Valdés, “Mathematical Foundations of Santilli Isotopies,” trans. Alan Aversa, Algebras, Groups, and Geometries 32 (2015): 135–308.
quotes (but does ...
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1answer
81 views
What was the chain of theories that led to relativity? [closed]
Can you briefly sketch the sequence of math theories that were necessary for Einstein to figure out a convincing background for relativity?
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2answers
4k views
What was the relationship between Einstein and Minkowski?
I read many Einstein's Biographies, but Minkowski was never mentioned, though his discovery of the union of space and time created the basis for GR.
Minkowski was Einstein's teacher of mathematics ...
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1answer
182 views
Is it true Einstein doubted relativity near the end of his life?
Heard he wrote a bunch of rambling thoughts near the end of his life and doubted his own theory of relativity...it was in Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson
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2answers
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Bainbridge's test of mass-energy equivalence
Kenneth Bainbridge was an early pioneer of mass spectroscopy. The Wikipedia article about him says:
He used this instrument to verify Albert Einstein's mass-energy equivalence, E = mc2
with a ...
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1answer
350 views
How did Maxwell fall short of Einstein?
This source (I believe it's in Ukrainian) claims that Maxwell came very close to creating the relativity theory, however, it was the fact that he was adhering to the traditional scientific frame of ...
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2answers
326 views
Did Einstein want to reduce general relativity to elementary mathematics?
In this recent article, the authors write
Consequently, it is a desideratum to teach general relativity in a way
that is based on elementary mathematics only. This objective, already
stated by ...
2
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1answer
124 views
Did Galileo state the principle of equivalence in full generality?
The weak equivalence principle (WEP) is often attributed to Galileo. Did Galileo ever state the WEP precisely? For instance as given here?
The original principle, usually attributed to Galileo, ...
4
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1answer
141 views
General Relativity, General Covariance and Equivalence Principle
Einstein realized that uniform acceleration is indistinguishable from a homogeneous gravitational field (the principle of equivalence) through the Einstein Elevator thought experiment.
From the ...
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0answers
56 views
First discussion of radial/volume excess in General Relativity
A well-known (but usually only cursorily discussed) feature of General Relativity is the so-called radial (or volume) excess due to the curvature of spacetime in the presence of mass/energy (or more ...
6
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1answer
159 views
When, and by whom was the Schwarzschild metric first taken to be valid for all radii greater than zero?
The metric was originally defined to be valid only from the surface of a black hole outward but somewhere along the line it was extended inward to include the region under the event horizon.
This ...
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0answers
59 views
Who first noticed that the radiation pressure formula $p=U/c$ agreed with $E=pc$ from special relativity?
Does anyone know behind stories? As it seems that $p=U/c$ was known before the advent of special theory of relativity, (Halliday, Resnick, Walker says that Maxwell derived this.) when $E=pc$ was first ...
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4answers
290 views
Textbook on the History of General Relativity
I have studied General Relativity from various textbooks already, and the subject fascinated me immensely. I was wandering if there is any textbook that deals with the chronological "steps" that ...
3
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1answer
224 views
Did Einstein get inspired by projective geometry?
I read somewhere that projective geometry was an inspiration to Einstein to build the theory of relativity. However, the keyword "projective geometry" isn't mentioned in history of general relativity ...
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1answer
251 views
What triggered the general relativity renaissance?
There is a period of general relativity history famous for its lack of activity, where during the 1950's, almost no general relativity was done. Looking through various bibliographies, there were very ...
3
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1answer
99 views
First appearance of causality issues
The oldest appearances of causality troubles in modern theories are of course the Kurt Gödel paper (1949), Reichenbach's philosophy of time and space (1927), Weyl's "Space, time and matter" (1922) and ...
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2answers
244 views
Could scientists of Newton's time have explored the limits of his laws of motion?
As noted on this Wikipedia page Newton's laws of motion and of gravity were "verified by experiment and observation for over 200 years" and found to be a "good approximation for macroscopic objects ...
3
votes
2answers
471 views
Math development and under-appreciation of Maxwell's Equations
Freeman Dyson expresses the opinion in his 1972 essay titled "Missed Opportunities" that Maxwell's equations could have played a much bigger role, one that is comparable to classical ...
2
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1answer
105 views
First descriptions of ultrastatic spacetimes?
What's the first appearance of ultrastatic spacetimes (that is, spacetimes with a metric of the form $ds^2 = -dt^2 + h$, with $h$ a Riemannian metric)? The oldest reference I can find on the topic is ...
3
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2answers
317 views
When Was Kaluza-Klein Theory Appreciated?
As far as I understand, the Kaluza-Klein theory, despite its unprecedentedly profound and beautiful character, had a modest following in its early days. I guess that two of the many reasons might be ...
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3answers
200 views
Absolute space and time before Newton
Why is so much emphasis put on the concepts of absolute space and time as the grand foundations of Newtonian mechanics, and not as foundations also of previous theories, as for example Kepler's laws ...
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1answer
388 views
Why is time represented on the vertical axis in space-time diagrams?
One thing that bugs me when learning and explaining special relativity concepts is that the time axis on space-time charts always on the vertical axis. While almost everywhere else time is going on ...
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2answers
9k views
Why didn't Einstein win a second Nobel Prize, for relativity?
Einstein's failure to win a Nobel until 1921, and that prize's not being awarded for his work on relativity, is generally ascribed to these factors:
Lack of sufficient experimental proof for the ...
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0answers
115 views
Modification of Newtonian Gravity based on Maxwell's Theory
As is well-known, Maxwell's equations were already consistent with Special Theory of Relativity while the Newtonian law of Gravitation wasn't. It can be shown by solving the equations of Maxwell for a ...
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1answer
61 views
Was the pre-special relativity discussion a hot topic in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century?
We know that low-dimensional materials and topological materials are some of the current hot topics in Physics.
Did this happen with the pre-special relativity discussions in the late nineteenth and ...
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3answers
246 views
Was an expanding universe proposed before Edwin Hubble's observations?
General relativity (1915), as I've heard it explained, describes a universe that is either shrinking or expanding. By adding a cosmological constant it can describe a universe in eternal steady state, ...
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115 views
First appearance of the timelike cylinder spacetime
Spacetimes with causality violations go back a bit of a way (at least as far back as Herman Weyl's "Space, Time and Matter" in 1922, followed by the Gödel spacetime in 1949), but one of the simplest ...
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2answers
402 views
How Einstein got the first idea for special relativity?
I am reading Big Bang by Simon Singh. Here is the short story (as I understood it):
Einstein gets a contradiction by assuming that
1- The speed of light $c$ is constant with respect the ether.
2- ...
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What was Einstein's reasoning to conclude particles follows geodesics through spacetime?
When formulating General Relatvity Einstein proposed that freely falling particles, that is those subject to no forces other than gravity, follows geodesics through spacetime. In other words, those ...
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1answer
157 views
Why did Einstein get a better hearing in Goettingen than Berlin?
Jeremy Gray in his 2008 book writes matter-of-factly that Albert Einstein "found he got a better hearing from Hilbert and Klein in Goettingen than he did from his colleagues in Berlin" (page 326). ...
