Questions tagged [special-relativity]
The special theory of relativity describes the motion and dynamics of objects moving at significant fractions of the speed of light.
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What is time, does it flow, and if so what defines its direction?
This is an attempt to gather together the various questions about time that have been asked on this site and provide a single set of hopefully authoritative answers. Specifically we attempt to address ...
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Why is there a controversy on whether mass increases with speed?
Some people say that mass increases with speed while others say that the mass of an object is independent of its speed.
I understand how some (though not many) things in physics are a matter of ...
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Is it possible for information to be transmitted faster than light by using a rigid pole?
Is it possible for information (like 1 and 0s) to be transmitted faster than light?
For instance, take a rigid pole of several AU in length. Now say you have a person on each end, and one of them ...
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If a mass moves close to the speed of light, does it turn into a black hole?
I'm a big fan of the podcast Astronomy Cast and a while back I was listening to a Q&A episode they did. A listener sent in a question that I found fascinating and have been wondering about ever ...
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A list of inconveniences between quantum mechanics and (general) relativity?
It is well known that quantum mechanics and (general) relativity do not fit well. I am wondering whether it is possible to make a list of contradictions or problems between them?
E.g. relativity ...
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If photons have no mass, how can they have momentum?
As an explanation of why a large gravitational field (such as a black hole) can bend light, I have heard that light has momentum. This is given as a solution to the problem of only massive objects ...
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If I run along the aisle of a bus traveling at (almost) the speed of light, can I travel faster than the speed of light?
Let's say I fire a bus through space at (almost) the speed of light in vacuum. If I'm inside the bus (sitting on the back seat) and I run up the aisle of the bus toward the front, does that mean I'm ...
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What is time dilation really?
Please will someone explain what time dilation really is and how it occurs? There are lots of questions and answers going into how to calculate time dilation, but none that give an intuitive feel for ...
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What is the proper way to explain the twin paradox?
The paradox in the twin paradox is that the situation appears symmetrical so each twin should think the other has aged less, which is of course impossible.
There are a thousand explanations out there ...
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How can time dilation be symmetric?
Suppose we have two twins travelling away from each other, each twin moving at some speed $v$:
Twin $A$ observes twin $B$’s time to be dilated so his clock runs faster than twin $B$’s clock. But twin ...
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Would time freeze if you could travel at the speed of light?
I read with interest about Einstein's Theory of Relativity and his proposition about the speed of light being the universal speed limit.
So, if I were to travel in a spacecraft at (practically) the ...
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Does a photon in vacuum have a rest frame?
Quite a few of the questions given on this site mention a photon in vacuum having a rest frame such as it having a zero mass in its rest frame. I find this contradictory since photons must travel at ...
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Why and how is the speed of light in vacuum constant, i.e., independent of reference frame?
I was told that the Galilean relative velocity rule does not apply to the speed of light. No matter how fast two objects are moving, the speed of light will remain same for both of them.
How and why ...
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(Almost) double light speed
Let's say we have $2$ particles facing each other and each traveling (almost) at speed of light.
Let's say I'm sitting on #$1$ particle so in my point of view #$2$ particle's speed is (almost) $c+c=...
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How does a photon experience space and time?
To an an external observer it appears that time has stopped for photon. But this relation is reflexive, so for an observer travelling with the photon it appears the universe has stopped everywhere.
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How is the classical twin paradox resolved?
I read a lot about the classical twin paradox recently. What confuses me is that some authors claim that it can be resolved within SRT, others say that you need GRT. Now, what is true (and why)?
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How do moving charges produce magnetic fields?
I'm tutoring high school students. I've always taught them that:
A charged particle moving without acceleration produces an electric as well as a magnetic field.
It produces an electric field ...
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How long would it take me to travel to a distant star?
Suppose I wanted to travel to one of the recently discovered potentially Earth-like planets such as Kepler 186f that is 490 light years away. Assuming I had a powerful rocket and enough fuel, how long ...
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How is light affected by gravity?
Light is clearly affected by gravity, just think about a black hole, but light supposedly has no mass and gravity only affects objects with mass.
On the other hand, if light does have mass then doesn'...
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Why is there no absolute maximum temperature?
If temperature makes particles vibrate faster, and movement is limited by the speed of light, then I would assume that temperature must be limited as well.
Why is there no limit?
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Interval preserving transformations are linear in special relativity
In almost all proofs I've seen of the Lorentz transformations one starts on the assumption that the required transformations are linear. I'm wondering if there is a way to prove the linearity:
Prove ...
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"Reality" of length contraction in SR
I was in argument with someone who claims that length contraction is not "real" but only "apparent", that the measurement of a solid rod in its rest reference frame is the "...
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What is so special about speed of light in vacuum?
I will try to be as explanatory as possible with my question. Please also note that I have done my share of googling and I am looking for simple language preferable with some example so that I can get ...
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Is time travel possible? Is it possible to go back in time?
I read somewhere that according to relativity, it is possible - involving black holes and other stuff - to jump into the past. Is it possible for anything to go back in time either continuously or by ...
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The choice of measurement basis on one half of an entangled state affects the other half. Can this be used to communicate faster than light?
It is often stated, particularly in popular physics articles and videos about quantum entanglement, that if one measures a particle A that is entangled with some other particle B, then this ...
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How can a photon have no mass and still travel at the speed of light?
I've read a number of the helpful Q&As on photons that mention the mass/mass-less issue. Do I understand correctly that the idea of mass-less (a rest mass of 0) may be just a convention to make ...
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If I am travelling on a car at around 60 km/h, and I shine a light, does that mean that the light is travelling faster than the speed of light?
The title says it all.
If I was on a bus at 60 km/h, and I started walking on the bus at a steady pace of 5 km/h, then I'd technically be moving at 65 km/h, right?
So my son posed me an interesting ...
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Why does the (relativistic) mass of an object increase when its speed approaches that of light?
I'm reading Nano: The Essentials by T. Pradeep and I came upon this statement in the section explaining the basics of scanning electron microscopy.
However, the equation breaks down when the ...
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What determines which frames are inertial frames?
I understand that you can (in principle) measure whether "free particles" (no forces) experience accelerations in order to tell whether a frame is inertial. But fundamentally, what determines which ...
Joss L
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Why are objects at rest in motion through spacetime at the speed of light? [closed]
I read that an object at rest has such a stupendous amount of energy, $E=mc^2$ because it's effectively in motion through space-time at the speed of light and it's traveling through the time dimension ...
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How do I derive the Lorentz contraction from the invariant interval?
While reviewing some basic special relativity, I stumbled upon this problem:
From the definition of the proper time:
$$c^2d\tau^2=c^2dt^2-dx^2$$
I was able to derive the time dilation formula by using ...
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Accelerating particles to speeds infinitesimally close to the speed of light?
I'm in a freshmen level physics class now, so I don't know much, but something I heard today intrigued me. My TA was talking about how at the research facility he worked at, they were able to ...
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Idea of Covering Group
$SU(2)$ is the covering group of $SO(3)$. What does it mean and does it have a physical consequence?
I heard that this fact is related to the description of bosons and fermions. But how does it ...
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Can Maxwell's equations be derived from Coulomb's Law and Special Relativity?
As an exercise I sat down and derived the magnetic field produced by moving charges for a few contrived situations. I started out with Coulomb's Law and Special Relativity. For example, I derived the ...
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What keeps mass from turning into energy?
I understand the energy and mass can change back and forth according to Einstein. It is fluid; it can go from one to the other. So, what keeps mass from just turning into energy? Is there some force ...
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Rotate a long bar in space and get close to (or even beyond) the speed of light $c$
Imagine a bar
spinning like a helicopter propeller,
At $\omega$ rad/s because the extremes of the bar goes at speed
$$V = \omega * r$$
then we can reach near $c$ (speed of light)
applying some ...
Hernan Eche
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Vector spaces for the irreducible representations of the Lorentz Group
EDIT: The vector space for the $(\frac{1}{2},0)$ Representation is $\mathbb{C}^2$ as mentioned by Qmechanic in the comments to his answer below! The vector spaces for the other representations remain ...
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Is it really possible to break the speed of light by flicking your wrist with a laser pointer?
Minutephysics has a popular YouTube video called "How to break the speed of light". In the video it states that if you flick your wrist while pointing a laser that reaches the moon, that the spot of ...
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What is the relativistic action of a massive particle?
all Lorentz observers watching a particle move will compute the same value for the quantity
$$ds^2 = -(c \, dt)^2 + dx^2 + dy^2 + dz^2,$$
$$ds^2 = g_{\mu\nu}dx^{\mu}dx^{\nu},$$
and ''ds/c'' is then ...
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Do we know why there is a speed limit in our universe?
This question is about why we have a universal speed limit (the speed of light in vacuum). Is there a more fundamental law that tells us why this is?
I'm not asking why the speed limit is equal to $c$ ...
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Is temperature a Lorentz invariant in relativity?
If an observer starts moving at relativistic speeds will he observe the temperature of objects to change as compared to their rest temperatures?
Suppose the rest temperature measured is $T$ and the ...
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Lorentz Invariant Integration Measure [closed]
When we canonically quantize the scalar field in QFT, we use a Lorentz invariant integration measure given by
$$\widetilde{dk} \equiv \frac{d^3k}{(2\pi)^3 2\omega(\textbf{k})}.$$
How can I show that ...
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understanding time: Is time simply the rate change?
Is time simply the rate of change?
If this is the case and time was created during the big bang would it be the case that the closer you get to the start of the big bang the "slower" things change ...
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Symmetrical twin paradox in a closed universe
Take the following gedankenexperiment in which two astronauts meet each other again and again in a perfectly symmetrical setting - a hyperspherical (3-manifold) universe in which the 3 dimensions are ...
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The origin of the value of speed of light in vacuum
Meaning, why is it the exact number that it is? Why not $2\times10^8$ m/s instead of $3$? Does it have something to do with the mass, size or behavior of a photon?
To be clear, I'm not asking how we ...
Tom Info
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Extended Rigid Bodies in Special Relativity
I was reading Landau & Lifshitz's Classical Theory of Fields and I noticed that they mention that an extended rigid body isn't "relativistically correct".
For example, if you consider a rigid ...
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Lagrangian for relativistic massless point particle
For relativistic massive particle, the action is
$$\begin{align}S ~=~& -m_0 \int ds \cr
~=~& -m_0 \int d\lambda ~\sqrt{ g_{\mu\nu} \dot{x}^{\mu}\dot{x}^{\nu}} \cr
~=~& \int d\lambda \ L,\...
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Can One-Way Speed of Light be Instantaneous?
I recently watched this video by Veritasium where he talks about the One Way Speed of Light and talks about the limiting case where in one direction the speed of light is $c/2$ while it's ...
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Why don't electromagnetic waves require a medium?
As I understand it, electromagnetic waves have two components which are the result of each other, i.e., when a moving electric charge creates a changing magnetic field at point X then a changing ...
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Distance in relativistic circular motion in invariant spacetime
I understand that the closer something travels to the speed of light, that time will stretch by a factor, and distance will compress by the same factor.
My question is, if something travels in a ...
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