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Re: [Phys-L] another DIY relativity experiment

On 05/20/2016 01:03 PM, David Bowman wrote:

I don't think we should be conflating an (imaginary) angle with its (imaginary) slope.

We agree that is a bad idea in general, but one can get away
with it in the limit of tiny angles (which is what I was doing).

==============

And FWIW angles in the xt plane are not any more "imaginary" than
other angles AFAICT. Especially if "imaginary" refers to √(-1).

There are "some" things you can do in spacetime by pretending to
have a Euclidean metric with imaginary distances in the timelike
direction, but this is not a viable long-term strategy. At some
point the only option is to recognize that the metric is non-Euclidean.

There is a discussion of this point in MTW: "Farewell to ict".