Abstract
A historical account of the birth of Special Relativity is given starting from the Lorentz invariance of Maxwell equations to the development of the concept of Minkowski space. The representations of the Lorentz group are briefly analyzed and the Noether theorem is recalled introducing the Lorentz and Poincaré Lie algebras. The chapter ends with a conceptual criticism of Special Relativity, stressing its conflict with Newton’s Law. In this way the logical need to step forward to General Relativity is laid down.
For a superficial observer, scientific truth is beyond the possibility of doubt; the logic of science is infallible, and if the scientists are sometimes mistaken, this is only from their mistaking its rule…
Henri Poincaré
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Notes
- 1.
Heinrich Rudolf Hertz, had a short life. He died in Bonn in 1894 at the age of thirty six. He was born in Hamburg in 1857. In his laboratory at the University of Karlsruhe, where he had been appointed full professor, Hertz constructed the first dipole antennas, both transmitter and receiver and in this way produced the first radio waves demonstrating the existence of the electromagnetic waves implied by Maxwell theory.
- 2.
Note that from now on we use natural units where c=1. The fundamental constants can be reinstalled at any moment, if necessary, through the use of dimensional analysis.
- 3.
From now on we use Einstein convention according to which indices are raised and lowered with the Minkowski metric, namely V μ≡η μν V ν and repeated upper-lower indices (or vice-versa) denote summation.
- 4.
Noether’s theorem was derived in 1915 in Göttingen and was published in 1918 in [10].
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Frè, P.G. (2013). Special Relativity: Setting the Stage. In: Gravity, a Geometrical Course. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5361-7_1
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