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[Phys-l] farewell to "ict"



On 05/21/2009 01:05 PM, Bob Sciamanda wrote in part:
If one uses the original Minkowski coordinates (x,y,z,w; where w =
ict) ......

Didn't ict go out of fashion a long time ago?

I had forgotten that Minkowski even mentioned it. His epochal
1908 paper devotes only a few sentences to it, calls it "mystical",
and then goes back to using plain old x, y, z, and ct without
the i, putting the required minus sign into the metric, i.e. into
the definition of dot product ... as is the modern practice.

Writing in the 1970s, Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler considered "ict"
to be passé. They wrote a section called "farewell to ict" that
has nothing good to say about "ict".

I don't see any upside to "ict". The downside is small in special
relativity, but much larger in general relativity.

Or did "ict" make a comeback recently when I wasn't looking?