I am well aware that the theory of special relativity, like Newtonian mechanics, need not be limited to observations made within inertial frames, provided one makes a few postulates concerning acceleration (such as the fact that at any point along the worldline of an accelerating observer...
I see, so the infinitesimal angular displacement dθ and the infinitesimal change in rapidity dφ associated with an infinitesimal Lorentz transformation do indeed form an antisymmetric tensor (of the same type as the angular momentum tensor). The derivation does indeed seem quite simple in...
I have previously studied special relativity, but only at an introductory level. So I decided to explore the subject more in detail later by thinking and working things out on my own, in addition to doing research online. In particular, I seem to have noticed some intriguing patterns between...
In a few textbooks in introductory quantum mechanics which I have looked through (e.g. Griffiths), it is heavily emphasized that the momentum-position uncertainty relation has a completely different meaning from the energy-time uncertainty relation, and that they are quite unrelated and only...
In several special relativity textbooks, I have read that special relativity only deals with observations made in inertial frames, and that it makes no predictions about observations made in non-inertial frames, and that only general relativity deals with non-inertial frames through the...
You correctly said that if we instead postulate that the speed of light is invariant in all inertial reference frames that have a relative speed less than light with respect to each other, then there are two possibilities: Either there does exist inertial frames that travel with the speed of...
I have read in several popular physics texts that general relativity predicts that gravity deflects light, but that Newtonian mechanics, in contrast, predicts that the trajectory of light is not affected by gravity. However, I am very skeptical and confused about this result.
We of course have...
Sorry, I wasn't clear before. What I was trying to say is that there does not seem to be any experiment one can perform that can show that one inertial observer can or cannot travel at the speed of light with respect to a second observer. For one to show that an inertial observer can move at the...
I know that special relativity is based on the postulate that an object that travels at the speed of light with respect to one inertial observer must travel with the speed of light with respect to all inertial observers. This postulate implies that no two inertial frames can differ by a relative...