Chronology Current Month Current Thread Current Date
[Year List] [Month List (current year)] [Date Index] [Thread Index] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Prev] [Date Next]

R: Special Relativity Question

----- Original Message -----
From: Leigh Palmer <palmer@SFU.CA>
To: <PHYS-L@lists.nau.edu>
Sent: Saturday, February 05, 2000 1:43 AM
Subject: Re: Special Relativity Question


At 1:55 PM -0700 2/4/00, Abul Kalam wrote:

(1) My colleague, who is a mathematician by vocation but quite
knowlegeable about and interested in much of physics, is intrigued
by a Special Relativity question ...

There is no violation inherent here. ... This is an "Everybody's
out of step but my Johnny" cachet to the whole picture, but
the laws of physics are still Lorentz invariant.

May I suggest a re-reading of Galileo's original formulation of the relativity principle?
What Galileo (and everybody after him, including Einstein, in my opinion) says, is that if
you are closed in a lab, performing experiments but not looking outside, you can't tell
you're moving or not. (You CAN tell, of course, if you observe deviation from the law of
inertia: then you know the lab is accelerating.)
Sure, if you actually look outside, and see the coast coming towards you, you know you're
moving towards the coast: how can be the opposite? But, as Leigh says, no physics
experiment can tell you that.

Paolo