The Void by Frank Close

The Void by Frank Close

Author:Frank Close [Close, Frank]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9781402782367
Publisher: Sterling
Published: 2010-12-06T16:00:00+00:00


Space-time

It was Maxwell’s theory of electric and magnetic phenomena with electromagnetic radiation having a universal speed that had led to Einstein’s new world view as expressed in his Special Theory of Relativity. Einstein had showed how Newton’s concept of inertial frames with its metaphorical grid of measuring rods and constant flow of time is but an approximation of a more profound picture. The German mathematician Hermann Minkowski then noticed that this theory took on a familiar form if space and time are intertwined in what has become known as four-dimensional space-time. We are all familiar with Pythagoras’ theorem for a right-angled triangle in two dimensions, such that if x and y are the distances along the horizontal and vertical sides, then the square of the distance along the hypotenuse is the sum of the individual squares: s2= x2+y2. We could think of x and y being the latitude and longitude of some point; we could rotate the map giving new lines of longitude and latitude, rotated relative to what we had previously but still being perpendicular to each other. The magnitude of s2 would remain the same in terms of these new x and y; we say that s2 is invariant under rotation (see below). In three dimensions we have latitude, longitude, and height z above the ground. The invariant distance measure then generalizes to s2= x2+y2+ z2. This is true in any inertial frame: Whether rotated or displaced, the distance remains the same.



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