Divide by Zero: Lorentz Transformation Explained

  • Thread starter Thread starter Dropout
  • Start date Start date
  • Tags Tags
    Zero
Dropout
Messages
53
Reaction score
0
Lorentz transformation shows that at the speed of light you divide by zero.

Photons travel at the speed of light, but it isn't matter, but should that matter, matter of fact?

Does this line of thinking lead anywhere, or should I terminate this world-line?
 
Physics news on Phys.org
"world-line"?
This thinking is good to note, but i don't think its going to lead anywhere. Kudos tho.
You really can't divide by zero... you can say that as something approaches the speed of light, the Lorentz factor diverges (approaches infinity).
The lorentz transformation equations don't really apply to light itself, or any gauge boson for that matter. Its just not really a valid to apply the equation to things actually traveling at the speed of light.
Cheers.
 
I started reading a National Geographic article related to the Big Bang. It starts these statements: Gazing up at the stars at night, it’s easy to imagine that space goes on forever. But cosmologists know that the universe actually has limits. First, their best models indicate that space and time had a beginning, a subatomic point called a singularity. This point of intense heat and density rapidly ballooned outward. My first reaction was that this is a layman's approximation to...
Thread 'Dirac's integral for the energy-momentum of the gravitational field'
See Dirac's brief treatment of the energy-momentum pseudo-tensor in the attached picture. Dirac is presumably integrating eq. (31.2) over the 4D "hypercylinder" defined by ##T_1 \le x^0 \le T_2## and ##\mathbf{|x|} \le R##, where ##R## is sufficiently large to include all the matter-energy fields in the system. Then \begin{align} 0 &= \int_V \left[ ({t_\mu}^\nu + T_\mu^\nu)\sqrt{-g}\, \right]_{,\nu} d^4 x = \int_{\partial V} ({t_\mu}^\nu + T_\mu^\nu)\sqrt{-g} \, dS_\nu \nonumber\\ &= \left(...
In Philippe G. Ciarlet's book 'An introduction to differential geometry', He gives the integrability conditions of the differential equations like this: $$ \partial_{i} F_{lj}=L^p_{ij} F_{lp},\,\,\,F_{ij}(x_0)=F^0_{ij}. $$ The integrability conditions for the existence of a global solution ##F_{lj}## is: $$ R^i_{jkl}\equiv\partial_k L^i_{jl}-\partial_l L^i_{jk}+L^h_{jl} L^i_{hk}-L^h_{jk} L^i_{hl}=0 $$ Then from the equation: $$\nabla_b e_a= \Gamma^c_{ab} e_c$$ Using cartesian basis ## e_I...
Back
Top