Abstract
The subject of this chapter is Einstein’s special relativity theory and what it says about the geometry of flat spacetime. This is not so difficult or abstruse as it sounds; it involves little beyond high school mathematics. A spacetime is simply the mathematical version of a universe that, like our own physical universe, has dimensions both of space and of time. A fiat spacetime is a spacetime with no gravity, since gravitation tends to “bend” a spacetime. Flat spacetimes are the simplest kind of spacetimes; they stand in the same relation to curved spacetimes as a flat Euclidean plane does to a curved surface.
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© 1994 Springer Science+Business Media New York
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Jennings, G.A. (1994). Special Relativity. In: Modern Geometry with Applications. Universitext. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-0855-6_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-0855-6_5
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-0-387-94222-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-4612-0855-6
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