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andytoh
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Relativists seem to devote their research in GR. I was wondering whether SR has been fully exhausted already. Probably at the physics level, but also at the mathematical level too?
andytoh said:Relativists seem to devote their research in GR. I was wondering whether SR has been fully exhausted already. Probably at the physics level, but also at the mathematical level too?
Many of those problems derive from people's desire to think of the "plane of simultaneity" as some sense of reality while I believe that a "Doppler view" of reality is much more practical when it ever comes to space travel at relativistic speeds. Unfortunately, at least IMHO, to many the idea of what an observer actually measures is secondary compared to what an observer constructs as some "plane of simultaneity" reality. Hope that makes any sense.Chris Hillman said:A fundamental new topic of current interest concerns relativistic navigation, and even in flat spacetime a full relativistic beacon navigation system is still a sufficiently new idea that ineresting questions remain. For example the Coll canonical chart for Minkowski spacetime (wrt some choice of four "beacons") has some perhaps surprising properties, e.g. it has four (real) null coordinate covectors but four spacelike (real) coordinate vectors, and it is clear that there is much to say about this new and fundamental concept, which obviates all the difficulties of planetary calendars/coordinates (with inevitable coordinate singularities) as well as the procedure of making laborious "relativistic corrections" to Newtonian concepts of navigation.
MeJennifer said:Many of those problems derive from people's desire to think of the "plane of simultaneity" as some sense of reality while I believe that a "Doppler view" of reality is much more practical when it ever comes to space travel at relativistic speeds. Unfortunately, at least IMHO, to many the idea of what an observer actually measures is secondary compared to what an observer constructs as some "plane of simultaneity" reality. Hope that makes any sense.
MeJennifer said:Up to a large extent I see the same issues with explanations of GR. In my (perhaps ignorant) opinion too much emphasize is given to coordinate views and less to the intrinsic geometric properties and how they relatate to the EFE with a result that people get more confused than helped in understanding GR.
andytoh said:Relativists seem to devote their research in GR. I was wondering whether SR has been fully exhausted already. Probably at the physics level, but also at the mathematical level too?
You might like this: C.B. Giannoni, Special Relativity in Accelerated Systems, Philosophy of Science. Vol. 40, No. 3. (Sep., 1973), pp. 382-392.robphy said:One outstanding problem in pedagogy is that the accelerated observer in SR has not been satisfactorily presented in textbooks yet.
You can temporarily download this paper "[URL 1973.pdf"]here[/URL]; I intend to delete this sentence by tomorrow.C.B. Giannoni said:The Special Theory of Relativity (STR) as formulated by Einstein is applicable only to inertial systems; however, it can easily be extended to accelerated systems by a mere reformulation that does not alter its empirical content.
robphy said:One outstanding problem in pedagogy is that the accelerated observer in SR has not been satisfactorally presented in textbooks yet.
robphy said:It's not clear to me if topics like relativistic thermodynamics and relativistic (Hamiltonian and Lagrangian) mechanics have been fully worked out for SR (let alone GR)... not to mention presented in textbooks.
Special Relativity continues to be an active area of research in physics. Numerous experiments are being conducted to test the predictions of Special Relativity and to further our understanding of its underlying principles.
Some current areas of research in Special Relativity include the nature of dark matter and dark energy, the validity of the cosmological principle, and the possibility of deviations from the theory at very high energies.
While Special Relativity has been extensively tested and confirmed, there are still some unresolved problems, such as the incompatibility with quantum mechanics and the lack of a consistent theory of quantum gravity.
Special Relativity has many practical applications, such as in the development of GPS technology and in understanding the behavior of particles in particle accelerators. Additionally, research in this area helps us gain a deeper understanding of the fundamental principles of the universe.
Some potential future directions for research in Special Relativity include exploring the effects of gravity on the principles of the theory, further testing the limits of the theory at high energies, and investigating the possibility of a unified theory that combines Special Relativity and quantum mechanics.