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Talk:Theory of relativity (view source)
Revision as of 20:40, November 11, 2009
, 20:40, November 11, 2009lorentz
::Now that I've addressed one of your points, how about addressing mine: relativity has absurd physical discontinuities, as explained in the entry.--[[User:Aschlafly|Andy Schlafly]]
::Now that I've addressed one of your points, how about addressing mine: relativity has absurd physical discontinuities, as explained in the entry.--[[User:Aschlafly|Andy Schlafly]]
:::It's sometimes tricky to say what exactly are the "assumptions" in a theory, but I thnik I agree with NgSmith on this point. One can derive the Lorentz transformations by assuming that the speed of light is the same in all reference frames. Einstein himself wrote a neat short piece "Simple Derivation of the Lorentz Transformation" that does this, even if it's not entirely rigorous. It's available online and quite lives up to its name. Others have done a more careful job of deriving the transformations. You're right that the Lorentz transformations do show we can't go above c, but I think it's more accurate to view this as a consequence of the assumption (c constant in all frames) underlying Lorentz, rather than viewing the Lorentz transformations themselves as the assumption. But I understand this is all up to debate and really comes down to how we want to formalize the theory. --[[User:MarkGall|MarkGall]] 15:40, 11 November 2009 (EST)