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Four-velocity
In physics, in particular in special relativity and general relativity, a four-velocity is a four-vector in four-dimensional spacetime In physics, spacetime, also called the space-time continuum, is a mathematical model that fuses the three dimensions of space and the one dimension of time into a single four-dimensional continuum. Spacetime diagrams are useful in visualiz ...Technically, the four-vector should be thought of as residing in the tangent space of a point in spacetime, spacetime itself being modeled as a smooth manifold. This distinction is significant in general relativity. that represents the relativistic counterpart of velocity, which is a Three-dimensional space, three-dimensional Vector (mathematics and physics), vector in space. Physical Event (relativity), events correspond to mathematical points in time and space, the set of all of them together forming a mathematical model of physical four-dimensional spacetime. The history of an object traces a curve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Four-position
In special relativity, a four-vector (or 4-vector, sometimes Lorentz vector) is an object with four components, which transform in a specific way under Lorentz transformations. Specifically, a four-vector is an element of a four-dimensional vector space considered as a representation space of the standard representation of the Lorentz group, the (,) representation. It differs from a Euclidean vector in how its magnitude is determined. The transformations that preserve this magnitude are the Lorentz transformations, which include spatial rotations and boosts (a change by a constant velocity to another inertial reference frame). Four-vectors describe, for instance, position in spacetime modeled as Minkowski space, a particle's four-momentum , the amplitude of the electromagnetic four-potential at a point in spacetime, and the elements of the subspace spanned by the gamma matrices inside the Dirac algebra. The Lorentz group may be represented by 4×4 matrices . The action of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
World Line
The world line (or worldline) of an object is the path that an object traces in 4-dimensional spacetime. It is an important concept of modern physics, and particularly theoretical physics. The concept of a "world line" is distinguished from concepts such as an "orbit" or a " trajectory" (e.g., a planet's ''orbit in space'' or the ''trajectory'' of a car on a road) by inclusion of the dimension ''time'', and typically encompasses a large area of spacetime wherein paths which are straight perceptually are rendered as curves in spacetime to show their (relatively) more absolute position states—to reveal the nature of special relativity or gravitational interactions. The idea of world lines was originated by physicists and was pioneered by Hermann Minkowski. The term is now used most often in the context of relativity theories (i.e., special relativity and general relativity). Usage in physics A world line of an object (generally approximated as a point in space, e.g., a p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mass In Special Relativity
The word "mass" has two meanings in special relativity: ''invariant mass'' (also called rest mass) is an invariant quantity which is the same for all Observer (special relativity), observers in all reference frames, while the relativistic mass is dependent on the velocity of the observer. According to the concept of mass–energy equivalence, invariant mass is equivalent to ''rest energy'', while relativistic mass is equivalent to ''relativistic energy'' (also called total energy). The term "relativistic mass" tends not to be used in particle and nuclear physics and is often avoided by writers on special relativity, in favor of referring to the body's relativistic energy. In contrast, "invariant mass" is usually preferred over rest energy. The measurable inertia of a body in a given frame of reference is determined by its relativistic mass, not merely its invariant mass. For example, photons have zero rest mass but contribute to the inertia (and weight in a gravitational field) o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Special Relativity
In physics, the special theory of relativity, or special relativity for short, is a scientific theory of the relationship between Spacetime, space and time. In Albert Einstein's 1905 paper, Annus Mirabilis papers#Special relativity, "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies", the theory is presented as being based on just Postulates of special relativity, two postulates: # The laws of physics are Invariant (physics), invariant (identical) in all Inertial frame of reference, inertial frames of reference (that is, Frame of reference, frames of reference with no acceleration). This is known as the principle of relativity. # The speed of light in vacuum is the same for all observers, regardless of the motion of light source or observer. This is known as the principle of light constancy, or the principle of light speed invariance. The first postulate was first formulated by Galileo Galilei (see ''Galilean invariance''). Background Special relativity builds upon important physics ide ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spacetime
In physics, spacetime, also called the space-time continuum, is a mathematical model that fuses the three dimensions of space and the one dimension of time into a single four-dimensional continuum. Spacetime diagrams are useful in visualizing and understanding relativistic effects, such as how different observers perceive ''where'' and ''when'' events occur. Until the turn of the 20th century, the assumption had been that the three-dimensional geometry of the universe (its description in terms of locations, shapes, distances, and directions) was distinct from time (the measurement of when events occur within the universe). However, space and time took on new meanings with the Lorentz transformation and special theory of relativity. In 1908, Hermann Minkowski presented a geometric interpretation of special relativity that fused time and the three spatial dimensions into a single four-dimensional continuum now known as Minkowski space. This interpretation proved vital t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vector Space
In mathematics and physics, a vector space (also called a linear space) is a set (mathematics), set whose elements, often called vector (mathematics and physics), ''vectors'', can be added together and multiplied ("scaled") by numbers called scalar (mathematics), ''scalars''. The operations of vector addition and scalar multiplication must satisfy certain requirements, called ''vector axioms''. Real vector spaces and complex vector spaces are kinds of vector spaces based on different kinds of scalars: real numbers and complex numbers. Scalars can also be, more generally, elements of any field (mathematics), field. Vector spaces generalize Euclidean vectors, which allow modeling of Physical quantity, physical quantities (such as forces and velocity) that have not only a Magnitude (mathematics), magnitude, but also a Orientation (geometry), direction. The concept of vector spaces is fundamental for linear algebra, together with the concept of matrix (mathematics), matrices, which ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lorentz Transformation
In physics, the Lorentz transformations are a six-parameter family of Linear transformation, linear coordinate transformation, transformations from a Frame of Reference, coordinate frame in spacetime to another frame that moves at a constant velocity relative to the former. The respective inverse transformation is then parameterized by the negative of this velocity. The transformations are named after the Dutch physicist Hendrik Lorentz. The most common form of the transformation, parametrized by the real constant v, representing a velocity confined to the -direction, is expressed as \begin t' &= \gamma \left( t - \frac \right) \\ x' &= \gamma \left( x - v t \right)\\ y' &= y \\ z' &= z \end where and are the coordinates of an event in two frames with the spatial origins coinciding at , where the primed frame is seen from the unprimed frame as moving with speed along the -axis, where is the speed of light, and \gamma = \frac is the Lorentz factor. When speed is much smal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Representation Theory Of The Lorentz Group
The Lorentz group is a Lie group of symmetries of the spacetime of special relativity. This group can be realized as a collection of matrix (mathematics), matrices, linear transformations, or unitary operators on some Hilbert space; it has a variety of Representations of Lie groups, representations.The way in which one represents the spacetime symmetries may take many shapes depending on the theory at hand. While not being the present topic, some details will be provided in footnotes labeled "nb", and in the section #Applications, applications. This group is significant because special relativity together with quantum mechanics are the two physical theories that are most thoroughly established, ''"If it turned out that a system could not be described by a quantum field theory, it would be a sensation; if it turned out it did not obey the rules of quantum mechanics and relativity, it would be a cataclysm."'' and the conjunction of these two theories is the study of the infinite- ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Position Vector
In geometry, a position or position vector, also known as location vector or radius vector, is a Euclidean vector that represents a point ''P'' in space. Its length represents the distance in relation to an arbitrary reference origin ''O'', and its direction represents the angular orientation with respect to given reference axes. Usually denoted x, r, or s, it corresponds to the straight line segment from ''O'' to ''P''. In other words, it is the displacement or translation that maps the origin to ''P'': :\mathbf=\overrightarrow. The term position vector is used mostly in the fields of differential geometry, mechanics and occasionally vector calculus. Frequently this is used in two-dimensional or three-dimensional space, but can be easily generalized to Euclidean spaces and affine spaces of any dimension.Keller, F. J., Gettys, W. E. et al. (1993), p. 28–29. Relative position The relative position of a point ''Q'' with respect to point ''P'' is the Euclidean vector res ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Index Notation
In mathematics and computer programming, index notation is used to specify the elements of an array of numbers. The formalism of how indices are used varies according to the subject. In particular, there are different methods for referring to the elements of a list, a vector, or a matrix, depending on whether one is writing a formal mathematical paper for publication, or when one is writing a computer program. In mathematics It is frequently helpful in mathematics to refer to the elements of an array using subscripts. The subscripts can be integers or variables. The array takes the form of tensors in general, since these can be treated as multi-dimensional arrays. Special (and more familiar) cases are vectors (1d arrays) and matrices (2d arrays). The following is only an introduction to the concept: index notation is used in more detail in mathematics (particularly in the representation and manipulation of tensor operations). See the main article for further details. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Metric Signature
In mathematics, the signature of a metric tensor ''g'' (or equivalently, a real quadratic form thought of as a real symmetric bilinear form on a finite-dimensional vector space) is the number (counted with multiplicity) of positive, negative and zero eigenvalues of the real symmetric matrix of the metric tensor with respect to a basis. In relativistic physics, ''v'' conventionally represents the number of time or virtual dimensions, and ''p'' the number of space or physical dimensions. Alternatively, it can be defined as the dimensions of a maximal positive and null subspace. By Sylvester's law of inertia these numbers do not depend on the choice of basis and thus can be used to classify the metric. It is denoted by three integers , where v is the number of positive eigenvalues, p is the number of negative ones and r is the number of zero eigenvalues of the metric tensor. It can also be denoted implying ''r'' = 0, or as an explicit list of signs of eigenvalues s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
