Searching for "Why Is Minkowski Spacetime Non-Euclidean" by Cronkhite

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Discussion Overview

The discussion revolves around the difficulty in locating a paper titled "Why Is Minkowski Spacetime Non-Euclidean?" by J M. Cronkhite, which is referenced by NIST. Participants explore various avenues for finding the paper, including library searches and online databases, while also speculating on the paper's existence and publication status.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory
  • Debate/contested
  • Technical explanation

Main Points Raised

  • One participant expresses frustration at not being able to find the referenced paper in various databases and their university library.
  • Another participant notes that the paper is from 1970 and suggests that it may be accessible if a library has a paid subscription to the American Journal of Physics.
  • Some participants speculate that the paper may have been a preprint that was submitted but not accepted for publication.
  • There are suggestions to check physical library archives for the 1970 issue of the journal.
  • Concerns are raised about the possibility of a citation error, with one participant suggesting that the reference might point to a different journal or a mis-transcribed source.
  • Participants discuss the limitations of the NIST reference and the lack of corroborating evidence from other sources like Google Scholar.
  • One participant shares a link to a related discussion on Stack Exchange, indicating that the topic may have broader implications in the context of Minkowski spacetime.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants generally agree that the paper is difficult to locate and may not exist in the expected form. However, there is no consensus on the reasons for this, with multiple competing views regarding its publication status and citation accuracy.

Contextual Notes

Participants note the potential for citation errors and the challenges of accessing older academic papers, especially those that may not have been published or are behind paywalls. There is also mention of the historical context of preprints and informal publications in the field.

Trysse
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TL;DR
Cannot find a paper
I cannot find the paper that is referenced here

https://www.nist.gov/publications/why-minkowski-spacetime-non-euclidean

Why Is Minkowski Spacetime Non-Euclidean?
Author(s)
J M. Cronkhite

I have looked here https://aapt.scitation.org/action/doSearch?SeriesKey=ajp&AllField=Cronkhite&ConceptID= by title and author and didn't find it.

Also could not find it on my university's library.

Any ideas where to look? Alternatively, recommendations on similar papers?
 
Physics news on Phys.org
It says American Journal of Physics (behind paywall), 1970. So if a library has a paid subscription, you can read it off the internet.
 
The problem is, that I am not able to find it in the first place.
 
I am sorry. Can some editor at NIST make the mistake to quote something that does not exist?
 
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It could be that it was a preprint that was submitted to AJP, but was not accepted.
 
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It looks like a paper from 1970.

I think I do something unusual: I will go to the libray (real world) and check for the 1970 issue of "American Journal of Physics"

In the meantime: What is your answer to the question:
[Moved to its own thread, as that's a different question than how to locate the paper]
 
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Trysse said:
It looks like a paper from 1970.

I think I do something unusual: I will go to the libray (real world) and check for the 1970 issue of "American Journal of Physics"
One can go here to read the titles and authors
https://aapt.scitation.org/toc/ajp/38/1 (Volume 38, Issue 1, January 1970)
...[next]
...
https://aapt.scitation.org/toc/ajp/38/12 (Volume 38, Issue 12, December 1970)
...
maybe 1971 and 1969 to be sure.
(But don't let me stop you from going into the real world!)

I looked through 1970 and didn't see anything like the claimed article.

Scholar.google didn't find anything up to 1975.
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=cronkhite+(minkowski+OR+euclidean)&hl=en&as_sdt=0,24&as_ylo=&as_yhi=1975
(change the upper limit to 2016 to see the first claimed reference to it)

You could contact NIST (publications? or library?)
https://www.nist.gov/about-nist/contact-us
 
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Trysse said:
Any ideas where to look? Alternatively, recommendations on similar papers?
It's not clear what would count as "similar" since the abstract isn't specific enough.
It's not clear what "truly Euclidean approach" means...
and, depending on what that might mean, I might be skeptical.

This might be of interest:
https://physics.stackexchange.com/q...ids-5-postulates-false-in-minkowski-spacetime
( I have an answer posted there. )

My own attempts at visualizations are at https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/author/robphy/ [in my signature]
 
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robphy said:
You could contact NIST (publications? or library?)
AJP is published by AAPT. Calling them would be a good idea
 
  • #10
Mister T said:
AJP is published by AAPT. Calling them would be a good idea
Since NIST is the only source of this reference, I would start at NIST.
AJP doesn't list it. Google Scholar couldn't find anything but the NIST reference.

As I wrote above, if it exists, it's probably a preprint
that may have been submitted to AJP but never published (maybe because it got rejected or was sent back for revisions that were never done, etc..).

As a grad student, as the internet was just getting more organized and before arxiv.org,
I found file cabinets of preprints of articles... some of which got published in peer-reviewed journals.
Some articles were just notes (typewritten or handwritten) that were copied and sent to other physics departments, and many were articles sent here by other departments around the world.
Most of them had a code used to catalogue them... it is a measure of work done (internally by that department).
Surely, many of these documents never made it to print in a journal.
I suspect this Cronkhite article is one such document.
It could be part of a set of "collected documents by [(say) NIST researcher]".
 
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  • #11
Trysse said:
It looks like a paper from 1970.

I think I do something unusual: I will go to the libray (real world) and check for the 1970 issue of "American Journal of Physics"

In the meantime: What is your answer to the question:
[Moved to its own thread, as that's a different question than how to locate the paper]
Well, this paper obviously does not exist. All AJP papers are available online:

https://aapt.scitation.org/
 
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  • #12
vanhees71 said:
Well, this paper obviously does not exist. All AJP papers are available online:

https://aapt.scitation.org/
Link is to AJPT, not AJP, I believe?
 
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  • #14
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  • #15
My guess, if the citation makes sense in context, is that someone used the wrong journal abbreviation and that it was actually in another journal (the Armenian Journal of Physic, e.g.) or in a department newsletter that someone mis-transcribed as AJP, the U.S. physics journal. I have seen that happen before.
 

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