Special Theory of Relativity

The Special Theory of Relativity

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AUTHOR
This document was written by David M. Harrison, Department of Physics, University of Toronto,
mailto:[email protected], April 1999. It is Copyright © 1999 David M. Harrison

This is version 1.17, date (m/d/y) 04/09/02.

This material may be distributed only subject to the terms and conditions set forth in the Open Content License, v1.0 or later
(the latest version is presently available at http://opencontent.org/opl.shtml).

TABLE OF CONTENTS
● Introduction
● The Constancy of the Speed of Light
The Michelson-Morley Experiment
Einstein "Explains" the Michelson-Morley Experiment
● Exploring the Consequences of Einstein's "Explanation"
● The Parable of the Surveyors
● Spacetime
Spacetime Diagrams
The Dimensions of Spacetime
More Spacetime Diagrams and Some Discussion
The Significance of the Minus Sign
● Further Consequences of Einstein's Explanation
Time Dilation
Length Contraction
Simultaneity
A Little About Language
Relative Speeds
Mass-Energy Equivalence
Tachyons
Superluminal Connections
The "Speed" of Objects
The Lorentz Contraction is Invisible
● The Twin Paradox

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● A Favorite Puzzle
● Conclusion

INTRODUCTION
In this document we discuss Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity. The treatment is non-mathematical, except for a brief use
of Pythagoras' theorem about right triangles. We concentrate on the implications of the theory. The document is based on a
discussion of the the theory for an upper-year liberal arts course in Physics without mathematics; in the context of that course
the material here takes about 4 or 5 one-hour classes.

Einstein published this theory in 1905. The word special here means that we restrict ourselves to observers in uniform relative
motion. This is as opposed the his General Theory of Relativity of 1916; this theory considers observers in any state of
uniform motion including relative acceleration. It turns out that the general theory is also a theory of gravitation.

Sometimes one hears that the Special Theory of Relativity says that all motion is relative. This is not quite true. Galileo and
Newton had a similar conception. Crucial to Newton's thinking is that there is an absolute space, independent of the things in
that space:

"Absolute space, in its own nature, without relation to anything external, remains always similar and immovable. Relative
space is some movable dimension or measure of the absolute spaces; which our senses determine by its position to bodies ..
because the parts of space cannot be seen, or distinguished from one another by our senses, there in their stead we use
sensible [i.e. perceptible by the sense] measures of them ... but in philosophical disquisitions, we ought to abstract from our
senses, and consider things themselves, distinct from what are only sensible measures of them." -- Principia I, Motte trans.

For Newton, the laws of physics, such as the principle of inertia, are true in any frame of reference either at rest relative to
absolute space or in uniform motion in a straight line relative to absolute space. Such reference frames are called inertial.
Notice there is a bit of a circular argument here: the laws of physics are true in inertial frames, and inertial frames are ones in
which the laws of physics are true.

In any case, from the standpoint of any such inertial frame of reference all motion can be described as being relative. If you
are standing by the highway watching a bus go by you at 100 km/hr, then relative to somebody on the bus you are travelling
in the opposite direction at 100 km/hr.

This principle, called Galilean relativity, is kept in Einstein's Theory of Relativity.

Many of the consequences of the Special Theory of Relativity are counter-intuitive and violate common sense. Einstein
correctly defined common sense as those prejudices that we acquire at an early age.

THE CONSTANCY OF THE SPEED OF LIGHT

Once we realise that light is some sort of a wave, a natural question is "what is waving?" One answer to this question is that it
is the luminiferous ether. The idea behind this word is that there is an all-pervading homogenous massless substance
everywhere in the universe, and it is this ether that is the medium through which light propagates. Note that this ether could

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define Newton's absolute space.

A rough analogy is to a sound wave travelling through the air. The air is the medium and oscillations of the molecules of the
air are what is "waving." The speed of sound is about 1193 km/hr with respect to the air, depending on the temperature and
pressure. Thus if I am travelling through the air at 1193 km/hr in the same direction as a sound wave, the speed of the wave
relative to me will be zero.

The speed of light is measured to be about 1,079,253,000 km/hr, and presumably this is its speed relative to the ether.
Presumably the ether is stationary with respect to the fixed stars. This section investigates these two presumptions.

Galileo attempted to measure the speed of light around 1600. He and a colleague each had a lantern with a shutter, and they
went up on neighboring mountains. Galileo opened the shutter on his lantern and when his colleague saw the light from
Galileo's lantern he opened the shutter on this lantern. The time delay between when Galileo opened the shutter on his lantern
and when he saw the answering light from his colleague's lantern would allow him to calculate the speed of light. This is
absolutely correct experimental procedure in principle. However, because of our human reaction times the lag between when
the colleague saw the light from Galileo's lantern until when he could get the shutter of his lantern open is so long that the
light could have circled the globe many many times.

In 1676 Römer successfully measured the speed of light, although his results differed from the accepted value today by about
30%

The Michelson-Morley Experiment

In this sub-section we discuss a famous experiment done in the late nineteenth century by Michelson and Morley. Some
knowledge of the fact that light is a wave and can undergo interference is assumed. A discussion of this occurs in the the first
two sections of the document http://www.upscale.utoronto.ca/GeneralInterest/Harrison/DoubleSlit/DoubleSlit.html.

In is ironic that Michelson himself wrote in 1899, "The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical reality
have all been discovered and they are now so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplanted in
consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly remote .... Our future discoveries must be looked for in the 6th place of
decimals." At this time there were a couple of small clouds on the horizon. One of those clouds was his own experiment with
Morley that we describe in this sub-section. As we shall see, the experiment played a part in the development of the Special
Theory of Relativity, a profound advance.

Recently some people, especially John Horgan in his book The End of Science (1996), have been making similar claims
about how the enterprise of science is complete. My opinion is that they are no more correct than was Michelson. I certainly
hope they are wrong, because if they are correct all the fun goes out of physics. In fact, as we shall see, I think there are
already a couple of clouds on the horizon. One cloud is the failure of our theories of cosmology to account for recent
observations of the universe. The other is the failure of the quark model to produce any truly useful results.

Before we turn to the experiment itself we will consider a "race" between two swimmers.

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We have two identical

swimmers, 1 and 2, who
each swim the same
distance away from the raft,
to the markers, and then
swim back to the raft. The
"race" ends in a tie.

Now the raft and markers

are being towed to the left.
In this case the race will no
longer be a tie. In fact, it is
not too hard to show that
swimmer 2 wins this race.

These notes are intended to be non-mathematical, with the exception of a brief use of Pythagoras theorem about right
triangles. However, some people would like to see a little bit of the math. Thus, a proof that swimmer 2 above wins the race
may be found here. Below, a further small amount of math will appear, but will always be labelled as a Technical note.

One of the difficulties that students experience in learning about the theories of relativity is that it is easy to ask questions of
themselves and/or others that are not well formed. Insisting on complete statements often makes the problems disappear. One
common case of sloppy language leading to poorly formed questions involves the concept of speed. If we say, for example,
that the swimmers in the above examples swim at 5 km/hr we have not made a complete statement; we should say that the
swimmers swim at 5 km/hr with respect to the water. If we are stationary with respect to the water then they swim at 5 km/hr
with respect to us. But if we are moving at, say, 5 km/hr with respect to the water in the direction that one of the swimmers is
swimming, that swimmer will be stationary relative to us.

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Now we consider the Michelson interferometer,

shown schematically to the right. The light source
is the red star to the left of the figure. The light
from it is incident on a half-silvered mirror, which
is drawn as a blue line; this is a "crummy" mirror
that only reflects one-half of the light incident on it,
transmitting the other half. The two light beams
then go to good mirrors, drawn as green rectangles,
which reflect the light. The reflected light actually
follows the same path as the incident beam,
although I have drawn them slightly offset. When
beam 1 returns to the half-silvered mirror, one half
is reflected down; the other half is transmitted back
toward the light source but I haven't bothered to
draw that ray. Similarly, when beam 2 returns to
the half-silvered mirror, one half is transmitted; the
other half is reflected towards the source although I
haven't drawn that ray either. The two combined
beams go from the half-silvered mirror to the
detector, which is the yellow object at the bottom of
the figure.

If the distance from the half-silvered mirror to mirror 1 is equal to the distance to mirror 2, then when the two rays are re-
combined they will have travelled identical distances. Thus, they will be "in phase" and will constructively interfere and we
will get a strong signal at the detector. If we slowly move mirror 1 to the right, that ray will be travelling a longer total
distance than ray 2; at some point the two rays will be "out of phase" and destructively interfere. Moving mirror 1 a bit further
to the right, at some point the two rays will be "in phase" again, giving constructive interference.

Say we have the interferometer adjusted so we are getting constructive interference at the detector. Then the "race" between
the two beams of light is essentially a tie. This may remind you of the race of the swimmers above.

Except that if we have the apparatus sitting on the earth, we have to remember that the speed of the earth in its orbit around
the sun is on the order of 108,000 km/hr relative to the ether, depending on the season and time of day. So the situation is
more like the second race above when the raft is being towed through the water. The interferometer is being "towed" through
the ether.

Michelson and Morley did this experiment in the 1880's. The arms of the interferometer were about 1.2 meters long. The
apparatus was mounted on a block of marble floating in a pool of mercury to reduce vibrations. They adjusted the
interferometer for constructive interference, and then gently rotated the interferometer by 90 degrees.

Given the speed of light as 1,079,253,000 km/hr relative to the ether and the speed of the earth equal to some number like
108,000 km/hr relative to the ether, they calculated that they should easily see the combined beams going through maxima
and minima in the interference pattern as they rotated the apparatus.

Except that when they did the experiment, they got no result. The interference pattern did not change!

It was suggested that maybe the speed of the earth due to its rotation on its axis was cancelling its speed due to its orbit
around the sun. So they waited 12 hours and repeated the experiment. Again they got no result.

It was suggested that the Earth's motion in orbit around the Sun cancelled the other motions. So they waited six months and
tried the experiment again. And again they got no result.

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It was suggested that maybe the mass of the earth "dragged" the ether along with it. So they hauled the apparatus up on top of
a mountain, hoping that the mountain would be sticking up into the ether that was not being dragged by the earth. And again
they got no result.

Thus, this attempt to measure the motion of the earth relative to the ether failed.

Lorentz was among many who were very puzzled by this result. He proposed that when an object was moving relative to the
ether, its length along its direction of motion would be contracted by just the right amount needed to explain the experimental
result. If the length of the object when it is at rest with respect to the ether is L0, then if is is moving at speed v through the
ether its length becomes L given by:

where c is the speed of light relative to the ether. If you chose to look at the brief mathematical supplement above, the
structure of this equation may look familiar to you.

Einstein "Explains" the Michelson-Morley Experiment

When Einstein was 16, in 1895, he asked himself an interesting question:

"If I pursue a beam of light with the velocity c I should observe such a beam of light as a spatially oscillatory electromagnetic
field at rest. However, there seems to be no such thing, whether on the basis of experience or according to [the theory of
electricity and magnetism]. From the very beginning it appeared to me intuitively clear that, judged from the standpoint of
such an observer, everything would have to happen according to the same laws as for an observer who, relative to the earth,
was at rest. For how, otherwise, should the first observer know, i.e.. be able to determine, that he is in a state of uniform
motion?" -- As later written by Einstein in "Autobiographical Notes", in Schilpp, ed., Albert Einstein: Philosopher-
Scientist.

He continued to work on this question for 10 years with the mixture of concentration and determination that characterised
much of his work. He published his answer in 1905:

"... light is always propagated in empty space with a definite velocity c which is independent of the state of [relative] motion
of the emitting body .... The introduction of a `luminiferous ether' will be superfluous inasmuch as the view here to be
developed will not require an `absolutely stationary space' provided with special properties." -- Annalen Physik 17 (1905).

Put another way, the speed of light is 1,079,253,000 km/hr with respect to all observers.

As we shall see, this one statement is equivalent to all of the Special Theory of Relativity, and everything else is just a
consequence.

Notice that the statement also explains the null result of the Michelson-Morley experiment. However, although the evidence
is not certain it seems quite likely that in 1905 Einstein was unaware of the experiment (cf. Gerald Holton, "Einstein,
Michelson and the 'Crucial' Experiment," which has appeared in Thematic Origins of Scientific Thought, pg. 261. and also
in Isis 60, 1969, pg. 133.).

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EXPLORING THE CONSEQUENCES OF EINSTEIN'S

"EXPLANATION"

Here we will begin to see why

Einstein's statement about the
constancy of the speed of light
leads to all of the strange
consequences such as time
dilation, length contraction,
etc. But first we should take a
few moments to carefully
explore just what we mean
when we say some event
occurred at some particular
place at some particular time.
We imagine a lattice of meter
sticks, such as shown to the
right, and at each intersection
we place a clock. This lattice
represents an inertial frame of
reference, and we imagine that
we are at rest relative to the
lattice.

We synchronise the clocks to the "Reference Clock." To do this correctly requires taking into account that if we are standing
by one of the clocks looking at the Reference Clock, the time that we see on the Reference is not the current time, but is the
time it was reading when the light we see left the clock. Thus we have to account for the small but finite time it takes light to
travel from the Reference Clock to us standing beside another clock. A bit tedious, but fairly straightforward.

We imagine some event occurs. We define its position by where it happened relative to the lattice of meter sticks and we
define the time when it happened as the time read by the nearest clock.

Of course, in practice nobody ever does this sort of thing.

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Usually we don't bother to draw the whole lattice, but

rather represent it by a set of coordinate axes, x and y, and
a single clock measuring time t, as shown to the right. We
have also put an observer, whom we shall name Lou, at
rest in his coordinate system.

Next we imagine that Lou has a light bulb at the "origin"

of his coordinate system. At some time t which we shall
call zero he turns on the light. The light moves away from
the light bulb at 1,079,253,000 km/hr as measured by
Lou's system of rods and clocks. At some time t later the
light will form a sphere with the light bulb right at the
center.

You can see an animation of the light propagating away

from the light bulb. If you are using a relatively modern
browser the animation will appear in a separate window
which you may close when you wish; if you are using an
older browser the animation will appear in this window
and you will use the Back button of your browser to return
here. Click here to see the animation.

Now, Lou has a twin sister Sue, whom we shall assume

was born at the same time as Lou (a biological
impossibility). Sue has her own lattice of meter sticks and
clocks and she is at rest relative to them. Just as for Lou,
we represent Sue's rods and clocks as shown to the right.

Sue is an astronaut, and is in her rocket ship which is

travelling at one-half the speed of light to the right relative
to Lou. Of course, relative to Sue, Lou is travelling at half
the speed of light to the left.

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Let us imagine that Sue, travelling at half the speed of light

relative to Lou, goes by Lou and he turned on the light
bulb just at the moment that Sue passed by it. Sue will call
this time zero as measured by her clocks.

Relative to Sue, the light bulb is travelling to the left at

half the speed of light. However, because of Einstein's
"explanation", the speed of light relative to her is exactly
1,079,253,000 km/hr. Thus, at some later time she will
measure that the outer edge of the light forms a perfect
sphere with her at the middle.

You can see an animation of the figure to the right. Click

here to see the animation.

If we think about the above a moment, it is clear that something weird is going on. Lou claims that the light forms a sphere
with the light bulb at the center. Sue claims the light forms a sphere with her at the center. But except for the moment when
the light bulb was first turned on, the light bulb and Sue are at nowhere near the same place. Evidently the position and time
of the outer edge of the sphere as measured by Lou's system of rods and clocks and as measured by Sue's system of rods and
clocks are not as our common sense would predict.

Note that the only assumption we have made here is the constancy of the speed of light. Thus, to avoid this sort of weirdness
one must come up with another explanation of the null result of the Michelson-Morley experiment.

We shall close this section by being slightly mathematical. The only

mathematics that we shall use is Pythagoras' Theorem for right
triangles.

This theorem says that for any right triangle such as the one shown
to the right:

x2 + y2 = h2

Now, when Lou measures the position of the outer edge of the sphere of light he can use Pythagoras' Theorem to calculate the
radius r of the sphere:

x2Lou + y2Lou = r2Lou

But the radius at time t is just the speed of the light, c, times the time:

rLou = c tLou

So:

x2Lou + y2Lou = (c t)2Lou

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Notice that we don't need to label c as being the speed of light relative to Lou, since it is the same number for all observers,
including Sue.

Now, Sue measures the position of the outer edge of the sphere of light with her rods and clocks and will conclude that:

x2Sue + y2Sue = (c t)2Sue

I will write the relations for Sue and Lou in a form which will be useful later:

x2Lou + y2Lou - (c t)2Lou = 0 = x2Sue + y2Sue - (c t)2Sue

THE PARABLE OF THE SURVEYORS

In this section we do a diversion: a fairy tale.

Once upon a time there was a kingdom in which all positions were measured
relative to the town square of the capitol.

This kingdom had a sort of strange religion that dictated that all North-South
distances were to be measured in sacred units of feet; East-West distances were
measured in everyday units of meters.

Despite this religious requirement all positions in the kingdom could be uniquely
specified.

There were two schools or surveying in operation. One, the daytime school, used a
compass to determine the direction of North. The other, the nighttime school, used
the North star to determine the direction of North.

As the sophistication of the measuring instruments increased, people began to

notice that the daytime and nighttime measurements didn't quite agree. This is
because magnetic North as determined by a compass is not in exactly the same
direction as the North star. The figure to the right illustrates, although the actual
difference is much less than in the diagram.

Finally, a young fellow named Albert attended both schools of surveying. He was also an irreligious person so he did not take
the religious requirement of measuring North-South distances in feet seriously. He converted those North-South distances to
everyday units by multiplying by k, the number of meters in a foot. He then discovered that although the daytime and
nighttime numbers for the position of a particular place differed slightly, there was a constant:

E2night + (k N)2night = E2day + (k N)2day

What he is calculating, of course, is the distance squared between the town square and a particular location using Pythagoras'
Theorem.

The original source for the above story is E.F. Taylor and J.A. Wheeler, Spacetime Physics (Freeman, 1966), pg. 1.

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SPACETIME
In the parable of the surveyors, we converted North-South distances from sacred units of feet to everyday units of meters, and
found that for the two rotated reference frames, the daytime and nighttime frames, there was a constant for the position of a
particular place in the kingdom relative to the town square:

E2night + (k N)2night = E2day + (k N)2day

In the section before that Sue and Lou were observing the same sphere of light expanding outwards and saw that here too
there was a constant:

x2Lou + y2Lou - (c t)2Lou = x2Sue + y2Sue - (c t)2Sue

Notice the similarity to the surveyor system. Take time, measured in sacred units of seconds, and convert to everyday units of
meters by multiplying the time by the speed of light. Take the normal position coordinates x and y plus the time coordinate,
square them and combine them: the result is the same number for both Sue and Lou.

Thus we are led to the idea the time is just another coordinate, i.e. that time is the fourth dimension. The fact that there is a
minus sign between the square of the normal spatial coordinates and the square of the time coordinates indicates that there is
some difference between space and time, but it is not a large difference.

Thus, we tend to write spacetime as a single word as a mnemonic to remind us of all this.

Note that the speed of light, c, is now only a conversion factor for units. If we had started out measuring time in everyday
units of meters instead of sacred units of seconds, the speed of light would just be one.

Spacetime Diagrams

The spacetime diagram is a useful visualisation technique.

The time axis is vertical, and of course we have multiplied t by c so we are measuring time in meters, the same as the other
coordinates.

An object that is stationary does not have its position change with time: on a spacetime diagram this would be represented by
a worldline that is vertical.

If an object is moving, its worldline is not vertical.

For something moving at the speed of light, it moves a distance of, say, 1 meter in a time of 1 meter. Thus the worldline
makes an angle of 45 degrees with both the x and ct axes. In the diagram, we have drawn the light cone, representing rays of
light that go through the point x=0 and ct=0.

The point x=0 and ct=0 is called the present. Coordinates in spacetime that are inside the light cone and have time coordinates
greater than zero are in the future; locations inside the light cone with negative time are in the past.

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A Spacetime Diagram

Consider that we are located at the present. We know that, for example, we can not know what happened at the star Alpha
Centauri yesterday; it is about 4 light years away and since no information can travel faster than the speed of light we will
have to wait four years to find out what happened there. Thus the coordinate of Alpha Centauri yesterday, which is outside
the light cone, is inaccessible to us. Similarly, we can not get a signal to Alpha Centauri that will arrive tomorrow. Thus the
entire region of spacetime outside the light cone is called elsewhere.

The Dimensions of Spacetime

There is a problem with the spacetime diagram: it only has one explicit spatial coordinate x. The way the light cone is drawn
suggests, properly, that there is a second spatial coordinate, say y, that points out of the plane of the figure. But what about
the third spatial coordinate? It has to be perpendicular to the ct axis and the x axis and the y axis. There is no simple way to
draw such a circumstance.

The following figures indicates one way to approach a representation of such a four-dimensional object.

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We begin with a zero-dimensional object, a point.

We move the point one unit to the right to generate a one-dimensional line.

Moving the line one unit perpendicular to itself generates a two-dimensional square.

We move the square one unit perpendicular to itself, and we represent the three
dimensional cube as shown.

Finally, if the moving of the square down and to the left was used to get from a square to a
cube, then we represent moving the cube perpendicular to itself as moving it down and to
the right. The result is called a tesseract.

In about 1884 Edwin Abbott wrote a lovely little book called Flatland: a Romance of Many Dimensions; the book has been
reprinted many times and is readily available. In it he imagines a world with only two spatial dimensions. One of Flatland's
inhabitants, named A. Square, became aware of the existence of a third spatial dimension through an interaction with a higher
dimensional being, a Sphere. He attempts to explain this third dimension to the other inhabitants of Flatland, which of course
promptly got him put in jail. The difficulties A. Square had in visualising the third spatial dimension is analogous to the
difficulties we have in visualising a four-dimensional spacetime. An animation of the interaction of the Sphere with Flatland
may be seen here.

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More Spacetime Diagrams and Some Discussion

The above spacetime diagram was drawn by Claude Bragdon in 1913 for his book A Primer of Higher Space. In this figure
the time axis is horizontal.

Bragdon's "day job" was as an architect. He, along with Abbott, also believed that learning to comprehend a fourth dimension
was in some sense equivalent to enlightenment. Bragdon designed many buildings in Rochester New York on which the
tesseract can be found.

Einstein wrote when his friend Besso died, "For us believing physicists, the distinction between past, present, and future is
illusion, however persistent."

Here is another spacetime diagram, this time from D. Postle, Fabric of the Universe, pg. 106:

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We imagine our worldline in this spacetime diagram. Then, as David Park wrote, "our consciousness crawls along our
worldline as a spark burns along a fuse" (in J.T. Fraser et al., eds., The Study of Time, pg. 113). As it crawls up our
worldline we discover new slices of spacetime.

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Postle included a continuous block of spacetime between the two different ways of slicing it. Quantum Mechanics calls into
question whether such a concept is valid.

Imagine we take one of the piles of frames of the movie and shuffle it. The correlation between our consciousness and what it
perceives remains the same. So -- would we notice any difference? I don't have any good way to approach a discussion of this
question, but it is one that has fascinated me for years.

Louis de Broglie wrote a famous commentary on the worldview of the theory of relativity:

"In space-time, everything which for each of us constitutes the past, the present, and the future is given in block, and the
entire collection of events, successive for us, which form the existence of a material particle is represented by a line, the
world-line of the particle .... Each observer, as his time passes, discovers, so to speak, new slices of space-time which appear
to him as successive aspects of the material world, though in reality this ensemble of events constituting space-time exist
prior to his knowledge of them." -- in Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist, pg. 114.

Dogen Zenji seemed to have a similar view 800 years ago. "It is believed by most that time passes; in actual fact it stays
where it is. This idea of passing may be called time, but it is an incorrect idea, for since one only sees it as passing, one
cannot understand that it stays just where it is. In a word, every being in the entire world is a separate time in one continuum."
-- Shobogenzo.

Finally, Arthur I. Miller has argued that this new way of conceiving space and time in Special Relativity is mirrored by the
cubist revolution in painting and especially Picasso's "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" of 1907. He believes that both Einstein
and Picasso were influenced by a statement by Poincaré in 1902 that "There is no absolute space … There is no absolute
time." Reference: Einstein, Picasso: Space, Time, and the Beauty That Causes Havoc (Basic Books, 2001) ISBN:
0465018599.

Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, 1907.

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Special Theory of Relativity

The Significance of the Minus Sign

In the parable of the surveyors, we saw that:

E2night + k N2night = E2day + k N2day

where the daytime and nighttime coordinate systems were rotated relative to each other.

For Sue and Lou we saw that:

x2Lou + y2Lou - (c t)2Lou = x2Sue + y2Sue - (c t)2Sue

This is similar to the surveyors, except that there is a minus sign between the spatial coordinates and the time coordinate.

The significance of the minus sign can be shown by

drawing the spacetime diagram for Sue and Lou, as shown
to the right. Sue's coordinate system is almost rotated
relative to Lou's, except that the time axis and the position
axis are rotating in opposite directions towards each other.

We saw a pre-cursor to this understanding in Postle's

spacetime diagram made of movie frames above, where we
saw that different observers slice spacetime in different
ways.

FURTHER CONSEQUENCES OF EINSTEIN'S "EXPLANATION"

We have just seen that Sue's time and position axes point in different directions than Lou's. This seems to indicate that time is
flowing at a different rate for Sue than for Lou, and that her measurements of the distance between two events will be
different than his. This is correct, and in this section we shall explore this and other consequences of the Special Theory of
Relativity.

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Time Dilation

We imagine that Lou has a light bulb, a mirror, and a light

detector, as shown to the right. At some time t equal to
zero he turns on the lightbulb. The light travels up to the
mirror and is reflected back to the detector. He measures
the time between the two events, turning on the lightbulb
and detecting the return ray with the detector.

We imagine that the light bulb and the detector are much
closer to each other and to the clock than we have
indicated in the figure.

We imagine the Sue is moving to the right relative to

Lou at, say, half the speed of light. Relative to Sue the
light bulb, mirror, and detector are moving to left at half
the speed of light. She measures the time between the
same two events that Lou measured; she will need two
synchronised clocks to do this.

Clearly the light travelled a longer distance from the lightbulb to the detector for Sue than it did for Lou. But the speed of the
light is the same for both Sue and Lou. Therefore, the time between the two events as measured by Sue's clocks is greater
than the time between the same two events as measured by Lou's clock. We therefore conclude the Sue's clocks are running
slow compared to Lou's clock.

This phenomenon is called time dilation, and says that moving clocks run slow. Thus time is flowing at different rates for Sue
and Lou.

If it were not for Einstein's "explanation," our common sense would say that if the speed of light relative to Lou is c, then the
speed of that same light relative to Sue would have to be larger than c. In fact, if one does the mathematics ignoring Einstein's
postulate, the time between the two events is the same for Sue and Lou.

Technical note: if Sue is travelling at a speed v relative to Lou, the mathematical relation between the time between the two
events relative to Sue and relative to Lou is given by:

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The mathematics that derives this above relationship may be seen here.

Note that if the speed of light c is infinite, the denominator above becomes one, and the times as measured by Sue and Lou
are the same. This is a general feature of Special Relativity: in the limit where the speed of light is effectively infinite these
effects are unobservable and common sense prevails.

This prediction of Special Relativity has been experimentally confirmed many times. For example the muon is a type of
cosmic ray formed in the upper atmosphere. It is unstable, decaying into an electron and an anti-neutrino. The lifetime of the
muon when it is at rest relative to us is 2.196 micro-seconds. The distance from the surface of the Earth to the upper
atmosphere where these cosmic rays are formed is about 25 kilometers.

These cosmic ray muons are travelling very close to but not quite at the speed of light. Even if they were travelling at the
speed of light, in 2.196 micro-seconds they would only travel 660 meters before they decay. Since they are travelling
somewhat less than this speed they will travel somewhat less than 660 meters.

However, when we look at the surface of the Earth we see many of these cosmic ray muons. How can they live long enough
to travel 25 kilometers? Because their internal clocks are running slowly compared to our clocks so they are living longer
than 2.196 micro-seconds.

Length Contraction

In the previous sub-section we saw that when a muon is travelling at high speeds relative to us, its clock runs slowly
compared to ours.

But imagine that we are moving at near-lightspeed towards the surface of the Earth and that a muon formed in the upper
atmosphere is stationary relative to us.

Now the muon's clock is running at the same rate as our clocks, so it will live only 2.196 micro-seconds.

Meanwhile the Earth is rushing towards us at near-lightspeed. Further when the Earth's surface reaches us the muon will still
not have decayed.

The only way that this is possible is that when the muon was formed, the Earth had to have been less than 660 meters away
from us.

Thus we conclude that lengths are contracted when they are moving relative to us. The distance from the Earth to where the
muons is formed is 25 km relative to a reference frame stationary on the Earth; the same distance is less than 660 meters in a
frame in which the muons are stationary.

The length of an object when it at rest relative to us is called the rest length. If the object is moving relative to us, its length
along its direction of motion will be less than the rest length.

Technical note: if we call L0 the rest length, then the length when it is moving at a speed v relative to us is:

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Note that this is the same equation Lorentz proposed for the contraction of objects in motion through the ether. Here, though,
we interpret the effect quite differently. In any case, physicists sometimes call this Special Relativistic effect the Lorentz
contraction.

Simultaneity

Imagine that Lou is standing in the middle of a railway

platform as a locomotive goes by at some high speed.
Relative to Lou, the platform and the locomotive have the
same length. An apparatus, labelled 1, on the front of the
locomotive emits a burst of light when it passes the right
hand side of the platform. A similar apparatus, labelled 2,
is on the back of the locomotive which emits a burst of
light when it passes the left hand side of the platform. Lou
sees these two flashes of light simultaneously, and since he
is in the middle of the platform concludes that the two
events occurring at 1 and 2 happened simultaneously.

Now imagine the Sue is riding on the

locomotive. For Lou the length of the
locomotive was contracted because of its high
speed relative to him; for Sue the locomotive is
longer than for Lou. Also, for Sue the platform,
travelling from right to left, will have its length
contracted.

Thus the two events, the right hand side of the

platform passing the front of the locomotive and
the left hand side of the platform passing the
back of the locomotive, can not happen
simultaneously.

Thus, two events that are simultaneous for one observer may not be simultaneous for some other observer. In terms of
Postle's movie-frame spacetime diagram above, we would say that if two events are in the same frame of the movie for one
observer they will not necessarily be in the same frame for some other observer.

A Little About Language

According to Whorf, the Hopi language cannot even express the idea of absolute simultaneity, that prediction of relativity that
so badly tramples on our common sense. But, the Hopi language discusses reality quite differently from English:

"The SAE [Standard Average European language] microcosm has analyzed reality largely in terms of what it calls `things'
(bodies and quasibodies) plus modes of extensional but formless existence that it calls `substances' or `matter' .... The Hopi
microcosm seems to have analyzed reality largely in terms of EVENTS (or better `eventing'), referred to in two ways,
objective and subjective. Objectively, and only if perceptible physical experience, events are expressed mainly as outlines,
colors, movements and other perceptive reports. Subjectively, for both the physical and nonphysical, events are considered
the expression of invisible intensity factors, on which depend their stability and persistence, or their fugitiveness and
proclivities." -- B.L. Whorf, Language, Thought and Reality, pg. 147.

I have a great deal of sympathy with the view that the language with which we think has a close correlation with what we

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think; this tends to put me in opposition to Chomsky, Pinsky, et al. In any case, I find it interesting that the Hopi language
analyses reality in a way so similar to the careful approach to measuring positions and times of events that we set up earlier to
discuss relativity, and that the Hopi language and relativity agree on the absence of absolute simultaneity of events.

Relative Speeds

Imagine some object, say a bus, is moving from left to right at 120 km/hr relative to Lou. Also imagine that Sue is moving
from left to right at 50 km/hr relative to Lou. Then our common sense tells us that the bus is moving from left to right at 120 -
50 = 70 km/hr relative to Sue.

However, we know from relativity that if instead of a bus moving at some speed less than the speed of light, we think about a
light wave moving at c relative to Lou, then the same light wave will move at c relative to Sue.

You will probably not be surprised to learn that our common sense result for the speed of the bus relative to Sue is not quite
correct. In fact, according to Special Relativity the speed of the bus relative to Sue is greater than the expected 70 km/hr by
about 0.000,000,000,000,35 km/hr, which is 0.003 millimeters per year!

Imagine an unmanned rocket ship that is moving from left to right at three-quarters of the speed of light relative to Lou, and
that Sue is moving from left to right at one-half the speed of light relative to Lou. Then relative to Sue the unmanned rocket is
moving from left to right at 0.40 times the speed of light, which is noticeably larger than the common sense prediction of 0.75
- 0.50 = 0.25 times the speed of light.

Technical note: if we say that some object is moving at speed uLou relative to Lou, and
Sue is moving at speed v relative to Lou in the same direction as the object, then the
speed of the object relative to Sue is as shown to the right. This equation has the
property that if uLou equals c, then so does uSue regardless of the value of v.

Mass-Energy Equivalence

Another prediction of Special Relativity is that:

E = m c2

Since we now know that the speed of light is just a

conversion factor for units, we can "read" this equation to
say that mass and energy are equivalent.

The relation between the mass m and the speed v of an

object is shown to the right.

We call the mass of an object when it is at rest relative to us

its rest mass. If the object is moving relative to us its mass
will be greater than its rest mass. In the figure to the right,
the rest mass is one.

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Special Theory of Relativity

Note that the mass approaches infinity as the speed approaches the speed of light. Thus, it would take infinite energy to
accelerate a massive object to the speed of light; another way of saying this is no massive object can ever travel at the speed
of light relative to us.

This prediction of Special Relativity has been experimentally confirmed many times. It forms the basis for nuclear energy.

Now we can answer Einstein's original question about what would happen if we pursue a beam of light at the speed of light.
The answer is that we can't. No object with a non-zero rest mass can travel at the speed of light relative to any inertial frame
of reference, although we can get as close to the speed of light as we wish by providing enough energy. But the light will still
always be moving away from us at exactly 1,079,253,000 km/hr.

A supplement about how E = mc2 arises in the theory has been prepared. The html version is here and the pdf version is here.

Technical note: if the rest mass is m0, then the mass m of the
object when it is moving at speed v relative to us is:

For light, the denominator is equal to zero since its speed v is

equal to the speed of light. By convention, we say that the rest
mass of light is zero, so we are dividing 0 by 0. The
mathematicians say that this is impossible, but physicists tend to
shrug off such pronouncements and say that in this case that the
division of the two zeroes works out to be the finite mass-energy
of the light.

Probably not Einstein's blackboard in 1905

Tachyons

For a long time people interpreted the material of the previous sub-section to mean that nothing can travel faster than the
speed of light. In 1967 Feinberg showed that this is not correct. There is room in the theory for objects whose speed is always
greater than c. Feinberg called these hypothetical objects tachyons; the word has the same root as, say, tachometer.

If these objects exist, their properties include:

● It takes infinite energy to slow a tachyon down to the speed of light. Thus c is still a speed limit, but it is a limit from

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both sides. Ordinary matter always travels at less than the speed of light, light always travels at exactly the speed of
light, and tachyons always travel at greater than the speed of light.
● If the tachyon has real energy, its rest mass must be imaginary, i.e. have a factor of the square root of minus 1. This is
reasonable, since relativity says that there is no reference frame accessible to us in which the tachyon is at rest.
● If, say, Lou observes a tachyon produced at point A and then travelling to point B where it it detected, for certain
states of motion of Sue relative to Lou she would see the tachyon travelling from B to A. Thus it is uncertain which
event created the tachyon and which was its detection. Thus tachyons indicate some difficulty with causality.

Many attempts have been made to observe the existence of tachyons; so far all have failed.

One of the attempts to observe tachyons involves a phenomenon called Cerenkov radiation. In order to understand this, we
must first realise that when we say that the speed of light is exactly c with respect to all observers, we are referring to the
speed of light in a vacuum. When light travels through a medium such as glass, its speed is less than c; for a typical glass the
speed of light in it is only about two-thirds of the speed in a vacuum.

It turns out that when an electrically charged object travels through a medium at a speed greater than the speed of light in that
medium, a characteristic electromagnetic radiation is emitted. This is Cerenkov radiation. The radiation is shaped roughly like
the bow wave from a speedboat.

For the bow wave of a boat, it similarly arises when the speed of the boat through the water is greater than the speed of a
water wave.

Nuclear reactors are sometimes encased in water to protect us from the radiation. Often there is a blue glow emitted by
charged objects emitted from the reactor that are travelling through the water at a speed greater than the speed of light in the
water. This is an example of Cerenkov radiation.

For an electrically charged tachyon travelling through a vacuum, its speed is greater than the speed of light in the vacuum and
thus it should similarly emit Cerenkov radiation. Thus, some attempts to observe tachyons has been to look for anamolous
Cerenkov radiation.

Superluminal Connections

The reason for the ambiguity in the direction of motion of a tachyon discussed in the previous sub-section arises from the way
speeds add for different observers, as discussed in the Relative Speeds sub-section.

Say a tachyon is moving from left to right at 100 times the speed of light relative to Lou. Then if Sue is moving from left to
right at a speed greater than 0.01 times the speed of light relative to Lou, the tachyon will be moving from right to left relative
to her. If she is moving at 0.1 times the speed of light relative to Lou, the tachyon will be moving at a speed of -111 times the
speed of light relative to Sue.

Imagine we wish to send a signal to Alpha Centauri, which is 4.35 light years away from us. If we send the signal at the speed
of light, it will take 4.35 years relative to us until the signal gets there. If we could send a signal at, say, 100 times the speed
of light then it would arrive in only 0.0435 years.

But if this signal is travelling at this "superluminal" speed relative to us, then for an observer moving towards Alpha Centauri
at a speed greater than 0.01 times the speed of light relative to us the signal will be going from Alpha Centauri towards us. So
if in our reference frame we say we have sent a signal to Alpha Centauri, there are other frames in which the observers would
say that Alpha Centauri has sent a signal to us.

It is these considerations that lead us to say that according to relativity no signal or information can travel faster than the
speed of light.

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Recently, some controversy has re-ignited on this topic. Further information may be found here.

The "Speed" of Objects

In this sub-section we explore the idea of the speed of

objects a little further. I learned this approach to the
subject from Brian Greene.

Reference: Brian Greene, The Elegant Universe (Norton, 1999), pg.

47 ff.

In the figure to the right, we imagine a race between two

identical cars. However, although the two cars travel at
exactly the same speed relative to the ground, the car on
the left wins the race since it travels the shortest path from
the Start to the Finish line.

We will find it useful to state that the velocity of the car on

the left is only in the North direction, while the velocity of
the car on the right has a component in the North direction
and another component in the East direction.

Although the example is fairly simple, we are about to use

it to make a conceptual leap:

According to the Special Theory of Relativity, all objects travel at the speed of light at all times

We imagine an object that is stationary relative to us. Then its worldline on a spacetime diagram is vertical. We use the fact
that time is another dimension of spacetime to say: the object is moving at the speed of light in the direction of the time axis.
This is analogous to the car on the left in the above race.

If the object is moving relative to us, then its wordline is not vertical and looks more like the path of the car on the right. But,
since it is moving relative to us, the internal clocks of the object run slowly compared to our clocks. Remember that the speed
of the object is the "distance" it travels divided by the "time" for it to travel that distance. So, in a fixed amount of "time" the
vertical "distance" is less for the moving object but the time for it to travel that distance also becomes less, so their ratio stays
the same value, the speed of light.

For objects that travel at the speed of light relative to us, time dilation means their clocks have stopped: they have no
component of their speed in the direction of the time axis.

The Lorentz Contraction is Invisible

We have discussed the fact that these relativistic effects violate our common sense because they are unobservable in our
everyday life. The reason for the unobservability is that the speed of light is so large compared to everyday speeds that it is
effectively infinite.

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In 1940 physicist George Gamow published a book, Mr. Tompkins in Wonderland, that imagines a world where the speed
of light is only 30 miles per hour. In this world these relativistic effects are readily observable. It has been collected with
another of his works dealing with Quantum Mechanics by Cambridge University Press into a book titled Mr. Tompkins in
Paperback.

In Wonderland, people observed length contractions, time dilations, etc. in their everyday life. In 1959 Terrell showed that
this is not quite correct. When we see the length of a moving rod, we are seeing the light from the back and from the front of
the rod that enters our eyes simultaneously. But if the rod is to our left and moving toward us, the light entering our eyes from
the back left the rod before the light entering our eyes from the front. Thus it looks longer than it really is. It turns out that this
effect cancels the length contraction. So we do not see the length contraction, although careful measurements of the
simultaneous positions of the front and back of the rod will indicate that the length is in fact contracted.

In fact, the object will look like it is rotated but not contracted.

THE TWIN PARADOX

Imagine that Sue blasts off from Earth, travels at high speed to Alpha Centauri, turns around and returns to Earth. Her twin
Lou stays on Earth. According to relativity, since Sue's clocks are running slow compared to Lou's, when they rejoin Sue will
be younger than Lou. Presumably all the clocks on Sue's rocket ship are running slow, including her internal clocks. So, for
example, if she is listening to a CD during her trip the music will sound perfectly normal to her.

Now consider what Sue will observe. From her point of view she is, of course, stationary. But after blast-off Lou moves away
from her at some high speed as Alpha Centauri approaches. Then, Alpha Centauri reaches her position and reverses it motion,
starting to recede; now Lou and the Earth are getting closer. Throughout Lou has been moving relative to Sue, so his clocks
should be running slow compared to Sue's, so he is the one that ends up being younger.

So we have argued that Sue ends up younger, and then have shown that Lou ends up younger. This is often called the twin
paradox.

Resolving the paradox is fairly easy. Recall that we have said that we can only do physics in inertial reference frames, frames
in which the principle of inertia is true. Although the Earth is in a circular orbit around the Sun and is also rotating on its axis,
these accelerations are sufficiently small that we usually treat the Earth as an inertial reference frame.

However, Sue is very far away from being in an inertial reference frame. She experiences high g-forces when she blasts off,
experiences yet others when reaches Alpha Centauri and turns around, and yet again when she decelerates and lands on the
Earth at the end of her trip. During all these times the principle of inertia is not true. Thus we can not analyse the twin
paradox from Sue's reference frame.

We analyse the twins in an inertial reference frame in which, say, Sue is stationary relative to us on her outbound trip. If she
is travelling to Alpha Centuari at 99% of the speed of light, then on her outward trip Alpha Centuari is approaching us at 99%
of the speed of the light and Lou is receding away from us at 99% of c. When Alpha Centuari reaches us, Sue decelerates,
turns around, and chases after Lou. But we're not allowed to go with her: we have to stay in our inertial frame. So relative to
us Lou is still receding away at 99% of the speed of light, and Sue is chasing him at an even faster speed than 0.99c. While
Sue was stationary relative to us, Lou's clocks were running slow relative to us. But when Sue was chasing after him her
clocks were running even slower than Lou's. If one does the math, it turns out that when Sue and Lou are reunited, Sue will
end up younger than Lou.

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Here is the spacetime diagram in a frame where Lou is stationary:

Here is the spacetime diagram in a frame where Sue is stationary on

her outward trip.

Without doing any of the math, however, we do have what turns out to be a general principle. If we analyse the twins in any
inertial reference frame and draw the spacetime diagram, the twin with the longer worldline ends up being the younger twin.

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A FAVORITE PUZZLE

We have a 25 m long pole and a 20 m

long barn, both as measured at rest
relative to the pole and the barn. We will
assume the back wall of the barn is very
very strong.

If the pole is moving towards the barn at

70% of the speed of light, its length will
be contracted to about 18 m. Thus it
clearly fits in the barn, and we can slam
the door shut (and run!).

But if we are riding along with the pole,

its length is not contracted and is 25 m
long. But the barn is contracted and is
now about 14 m long. Clearly the pole
does not fit in the barn.

Does the pole fit into the barn or not?

CONCLUSION
A famous Zen story: Two Zen monks were arguing about a flag waving in the breeze, and whether it was the flag or the wind
that was moving. The Sixth Patriarch of Zen, Hui Neng, overheard; "I suggested it was neither, that what moved was their
own mind."

A commentary by Mumon:

Wind, flag, mind moves.

The same understanding.
When the mouth opens
All are wrong.

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