Contents
Why Special Relativity Is Interesting
Special Relativity (SR) is one of the main cornerstones of modern physics.
If SR is wrong, then everything based on it will crumble too, like a house of cards.
(For example, quantum field theories and the standard model of particle physics are based on SR.)
If you can falsify SR, you get 10 Nobel Prizes, not just 1, and you get a gold star from your grade 3 teacher.
SR lets you understand the rules for time machines.
Time machines into the past are strongly forbidden.
Time machines going into the future are permitted, and use high speeds (or strong gravity fields).
SR has something very unusual.
SR has a Rule Zero: a rule for making all the other rules.
This Rule Zero is interesting because it's a set of handcuffs: it's very tightly constraining.
Being tightly constrained is a good thing for a scientific theory, because it's easier to falsify.
SR is a cornerstone of modern physics mostly because of Rule Zero.
SR is mathematically simple.
If you know what a square root is, then you can understand the core of SR.
For bonus points, if you're not afraid of a cosine, then you can understand what SR says about optics (photons and light rays).
SR is a reboot of physics. It goes back to the beginning, and fixes an important mistake.
When physics began in the 1600s, they had certain ideas about space and time.
We now know that some of those ideas were mistaken.
(Those mistakes were completely natural, since they had no data for objects moving at really high speeds.)
Albert Einstein was the first person to figure this out.
He pointed out the mistake, which has to do with time.
In short, the mistake was assuming that time is absolute.
Instead of absolute time, you have an absolute speed limit, and an absolute 'space-time interval' (see below).
When you learn SR, you get to understand how time dilation works.
The discovery of time dilation is one of the most important discoveries in all of science.
Some have compared its discovery with the discovery that the Earth is spherical, for instance.
When you know SR well, you can spot a common mistake - the mistake of forgetting about time dilation.
(This mistake can even be made by trained physicists who should know better.
In some cases, they know the theory, but they haven't really internalized it.)
Take this statement as an example:
'The Pleiades are 400 light-years away. So, it will take at least 400 years travelling at near light speed to get there.'
This statement is appropriate only in the world of Isaac Newton.
In the world of SR, this statement, in unqualified form, is wrong.
Why? Because in the world of SR, the time between two events in general depends on who's doing the talking.
For a traveller going to the Pleiades at near light speed, the time that they care about is the time on their own wristwatch.
And measured by their own wristwatch, that time is going to be less than 400 years.
In principle, there's no minimum travel-time, as measured by the traveller.
The nearer they approach light speed, the smaller the travel-time becomes. That's time dilation.
Summary of Important Results
Here's a quick summary of some important results in SR. More details are found below.
Speeds:
- there's a speed limit c for all signals (matter, photons)
- there's no speed limit for things that aren't signals (geometrical ideas, not matter or photons)
- v < c when the signal has mass (matter)
- v = c when the signal has no mass (photons)
Time:
- moving clocks run slowly with respect to stationary clocks
- high speed one-way trips are wormholes
- high speed return-trips are time machines into the future
- time machines can go to the future, but not to the past
- there's no minimal travel-time for any trip between any two places in the Universe
Length:
- moving objects are smaller in size (in the direction of their motion), with respect to stationary identical objects
Pairs of events:
- the time interval between the events is not invariant (absolute)
- sometimes the time-order of the pair is invariant, sometimes it's not
- a pair that's simultaneous in one grid, may not be simultaneous in another
- the interval-squared s2 = c2t2 - d2 between the events is invariant
Optics:
- high-speed travel changes the apparent color, brightness, and direction of stars, moving them towards the direction of travel
- high-speed jets of matter have beaming effects that change their apparent brightness
- high-speed jets of matter moving towards you can appear to move faster than c, but this is only a geometrical effect
Other:
- space-time is an idea, not something you can point to
- there's a rule zero, a rule for making all the other rules
- principles are most effective (and beautiful) when they strongly limit the number of possible theories
The Idea of Space-Time is Pretty Simple
A ball rolls across the floor in a path, in a straight line from A to B.
It starts by moving quickly, slows down, and then stops.
You can draw a picture of the ball's motion in 3 ways:
1. Draw a straight line from A to B.
This isn't very good, because there's no information about the speed of the ball. So this picture is incomplete.
2. Draw a straight line from A to B, but also add tick marks to the the line, indicating its position, once per second.
This is better, because it has information about both the position and the speed.
You could say that the first try has only information about where, and the second try has
information about both where and when.
3. Draw a curve in space-time.
To do that, just represent the time as another coordinate in the diagram, at a right angle to the x-axis.
In this case, the 1-dimensional line is replaced by a 2-dimensional plane.
The tick marks that were used to indicate the time are replaced by a time coordinate.
The time axis is placed vertically here, simply to follow a common convention.
This is a 2-dimensional space-time.
The points in this plane are events, consisting of a where (x) and a when (t).
The path of the ball is a continuous sequence of connected events in space-time, which form its history, or world-line.
When the ball is motionless, the history is vertical.
When the ball is moving, the history bends away from the vertical.
The faster the ball is moving, the more its history bends away from the vertical.
In order to make these diagrams, you need convert the unit of time (seconds) into a unit of distance (meters).
The conversion looks like this:
seconds * (meters / second) => meters
The conversion factor is a fixed quantity having the unit of speed (meters per second).
The speed you pick is up to you.
But, as explained below, most of the time the speed is chosen to be Nature's speed limit c (see below).
The basic idea of space-time is to convert times to lengths,
and simply pretend that this time/length is an extra dimension, in addition to the space dimensions.
It's important to understand that space-time, with its 'extra' dimension of time, is a geometrical idea, a mental abstraction.
It's not something you can physically point to.
The idea of representing the history of an object as a curve in space-time is not just a mathematical curiosity.
Space-time actually has a lot of interesting and important geometrical structure.
Nature has many important rules that can be expressed elegantly only using the idea of space-time.
Indeed, it's not an exaggeration to say that the geometry of space-time is at the very core of physics.
Example Histories
When an object is moving along a straight line, you can draw its history in a space-time diagram having
two axes at 90° to each other, one for the time (t), and one for the distance (x).
These are the simplest kinds of space-time diagrams, and sometimes they're all you need.
Some examples are shown below:
- A) an object that's not moving at all (stationary) is just a vertical line
- B) an object moving at a speed that doesn't change is a line that makes an angle with the vertical; the
faster it's moving, the greater the angle with the vertical
- C) stationary, then moving, then stationary again
- D) a round-trip, and going slower on the way back
Sharp corners in the history correspond to abrupt changes in the motion.
Gradual changes in speed are shown with curving lines.
- E) moving in the +x direction with an increasing speed
- F) moving in the -x direction with an increasing speed
- G) playing catch: an object bouncing back and forth between two places is a zig-zag
- H) two objects move towards each other, collide, then bounce back to where they came from
These simple animations also show how simple motions
appear as histories in space-time.
Rebooting Physics
SR is a reboot of physics from the beginning.
Physics begins with examining motion, and the examination of motion begins like this:
- using grids to measure motion
- the rule of inertia
- the inertial grid family: the group of grids in which the rule of inertia holds
So let's examine these ideas in sequence.
Grids Measure Motion
The motion of an object is always relative to something else.
A grid (or a frame of reference) is used to measure positions and times.
A grid is most easily pictured as a cubic lattice.
The lattice is constructed out of meter sticks (or whatever you prefer).
Here are some pictures to illustrate (these are diagrams of space, not space-time):
The idea of course is to use numbers to state the position of an event in an object's history.
Let's take the 3D case (3 space dimensions):
- traditionally, the 3 numbers are labeled x, y, and z.
- each of these 3 numbers corresponds to a distance measured along one of the axes (x, y, or z).
- there is an origin point, where the axes all meet, and where x, y, and z are all 0.
- these axes are at right angles to each other.
- the sign of the numbers indicates direction, for example the +x direction, or the -x direction.
So far, this scheme only measures positions.
Next we'll look at measuring time with a grid.
Grids Measure Time With Many Sensors, Not One
To measure time, you might think that only a single master clock would be needed for a grid.
But that's hard, because you need to figure out how to measure the time of distant events.
It's simpler to use multiple, synchronized clocks, that are spread out over the entire grid.
(You can picture these clocks as being placed at the intersection points of the meter sticks.)
When you measure the position of an object, you can measure the time as well, just by using the clock at the same location.
When you simultaneously measure both the position and the time, then you measure the coordinates of an event, a where and a when.
This is simpler than using a single master clock, since everything remains completely local.
Now we have a system for measuring the positions of things in space,
combined with many stationary, synchronized clocks (or sensors) spread out over that system to measure the time as well.
Calling them sensors instead of clocks is useful, since they have to detect and record local events.
Now picture making measurements with such a grid.
Imagine being in interstellar space, building a grid, and then throwing objects through the grid.
As the object passes by each sensor, the sensor detects the object, and records the event: at time t, the object was at some sensor location (x,y,z).
The sum total of all these events (t,x,y,z) is a measurement of the history of the object.
You could imagine a master computer that gathers together all these events, and reconstructs the history of the object.
There are ways of making measurements that don't use grids.
For example, in astronomy, there is only a single sensor (the telescope), not many, so there's no grid at all.
The reason grids are emphasized here is that it's the simplest way to describe the basic rules of how measurements of space and time work.
The key point is this: grids are simplest because each sensor is responsible for recording only the local
events that happen in its own little neighbourhood.
Any other way of looking at measurements is more complicated.
To summarize, when you think of a grid, you should have this sort of picture in your head:
- a cubic grid of sensors spread out over an area or volume (either 2D or 3D)
- the sensors are separated by meter sticks
- the grid can have any orientation, location, or speed, but it's not allowed to be spinning or accelerating (more on acceleration below)
- the sensors don't move with respect to each other
- sensors record local events only, and not distant ones
- the sensors have a clock, and record the time of each event
- the sensor clocks are synchronized with each other
A Camera Is Not A Grid
Let's use the term camera to represent a single sensor.
With a camera, you're usually concerned with incoming light signals from far away objects.
This corresponds with actual observations made by astronomers (and by your own eyes too).
It's important to understand that a camera is not a grid.
A grid is always a collection of a large number of sensors, not just one. With a grid,
you can make calculations using numbers from multiple sensors (as seen below).
With a camera, you can't do that, since there's only one sensor.
These perspectives are different, and must be kept in mind.
The question of what a camera (or your own eye) actually sees is an interesting one.
It's also a practical one, since astronomers use such sensors in their instruments, to
view the behaviour of objects having large speeds (jets, active galactic nuclei, and so on).
We'll return to this later, in Part II.
Inertial Grid
What's the simplest kind of motion in the Universe?
To see the simplest motion of all, you need to go to interstellar (or intergalactic) space, and look at the motion of an object
which is far, far away from everything else (except for your idealized grid, of course).
Such an object is called a freely moving object - it doesn't interact with anything; no forces, no friction, nothing.
How does it move? It drifts perfectly and serenely, in a straight line, at constant speed.
By definition, this straight line motion is only true in an inertial grid (this is Newton's first rule of motion):
In an inertial grid, the speed and direction of motion of a freely moving object doesn't change.
Important: in English, the word acceleration means to speed up.
But in physics, the word acceleration is more broad, and means any kind of a change in how an object is moving:
- the speed increases
- the speed decreases
- the direction of motion changes
So, you can say that in an inertial grid, a freely moving object doesn't accelerate.
You can test a grid to see if it's inertial by observing a freely moving object;
if it accelerates at any time, then the grid isn't inertial.
In principle, there are an infinite number of possible inertial grids.
Each inertial grid is parochial ("confined to a narrow area"), in the sense that the
raw measurements of event coordinates made in each grid are specific to that grid, and only that grid.
The event coordinates don't match between grids.
Inertial Grid Family
Inertial grids form a family.
If you have one inertial grid, then you can make another one by applying one or more of the
four allowable grid transformations:
- change the starting point (displacement): change the place selected for the origin (x y z)=(0 0 0), or
the moment in time for which t=0.
- rotate: change the directions of the spatial xyz axes, to point to some other fixed directions.
- mirror reflection: swap the directions of the positive and negative directions for 1 or 3 axes.
(The case of swapping 2 axes is actually the same as a rotation, so it's left out here.)
You can do this for the time as well, by having the clocks go backwards into the future.
- boost: let the grid move in some fixed direction, at a constant speed (this is the only change that involves
one grid moving with respect to another).
If you have an inertial grid to start with,
then you can gleefully mix and match the above transformations in any way you want, and you will
always end up with another inertial grid; you will always stay within the inertial grid family.
(You can explore these transformations using this animation.)
But if you go outside the above kinds of transformations,
then you are outside the family.
You'll have a non-inertial grid,
in which the motion of a freely moving object isn't uniform.
Here are some examples of non-inertial grids:
- a grid which is spinning or tumbling in any way
- a grid which whose speed is changing, either speeding up or slowing down (a spacecraft firing its engines, for example)
- a grid which whose direction of motion is changing (going in a circle, for example)
Invariants: What Family Members Agree On
So far, all we have is a big pile of data about events.
Even worse, each member of the inertial grid family has their own version of the data, with different values
for the where and when coordinates of each event.
Questions:
- what can all members of the inertial grid family agree on?
- how do we move from the raw data of measurements, specific to each sensor grid, to the rules of physics?
- in summary, how do we go from the parochial to the universal?
One way of moving from the parochial to the universal is to look for special combinations of quantities,
calculated (derived) from the raw data, that happen to have the same value for all members of the inertial grid family.
If you find such a combination, then you'll likely be able to make a new rule of physics with it.
This leads to an important definition:
If a quantity is the same for all members of the inertial grid family, then it's said to be an invariant quantity.
(For brevity, this site will always use the word invariant in the above sense, as applying to
all members of the inertial grid family.)
Here are some examples of the many invariant quantities that have been found:
- the maximum speed limit for all signals (discussed below)
- the space-time interval between any two events (discussed below)
- action integrals, which are related to forces and fields (discussed below)
- the volume of a region in space-time (discussed below)
- the electric charge and rest-mass of any particle
- E2 - H2, the difference in the squared sizes of electric and magnetic fields
- ...and many others...
Rule Zero: The Rule About All The Other Rules
Invariants lead directly to an important rule.
It's a strange one, since it's really a rule about all the other rules:
Rules must be expressible using only invariants.
In a sense, relativity is the search for invariants - the search for what we can all agree on.
This is a kind of mission statement, which starts a quest to find out what these invariants are, and what are their consequences.
The most beautiful thing about this rule is that it's so deeply constraining.
Constraints don't hurt a scientific theory, they actually help it, by making it easier to falsify.
Invariant #1: Speed Limit
The first and mightiest of all invariants is this:
There's an invariant universal speed limit for all signals.
What's a signal? Any physical object (matter, radiation) that moves from one place to another.
So, the above rule says that no signal is instantaneous, and that the speed of any signal, anywhere in the Universe,
at any time in the history of the Universe, can only be between 0 and a fixed
maximum speed, as measured in any inertial grid.
The speed limit is a universal constant: it's the same at all times, and in all places.
Is this rule consistent with the rule-about-rules? Yes, because it speaks only about an invariant (the speed limit).
In fact, the speed limit rule is simply an assertion that a certain invariant exists.
The value of the speed limit is 299,792,458 meters per second,
usually denoted by the letter c.
Most people refer to this speed as the speed of light.
But that's not the best way to think about it.
For one thing, it's the speed of any massless particle, not just the speed of photons.
The most important thing about this speed is that it's a speed limit for all signals.
The existence of this speed limit means that the night sky is a time machine.
When you look up at night and gaze at the stars, the starlight you see has different ages,
from a minimum of 4.4 years
(Alpha Centauri)
to a maximum of 2.5 million years (the Andromeda Galaxy).
The largest telescopes can detect light that is older than any
dinosaur fossil, and even older than the Earth itself.
The oldest light is the cosmic microwave background
(detected by radio telescopes). Its photons were emitted about 380,000 years after the Big Bang,
which makes them about 13.8 billion years old.
In this sense, astronomers are also archaeologists, looking backwards in time, using a fossil record made of light.
The light has travelled undisturbed for even billions of years, until, at last, in a final act before ceasing
to be, it offers up its quantum of energy, perfectly preserved for aeons, into the waiting bucket of a telescope, pointed
by a curious human towards the night sky.
Here's where the fun begins.
You can combine the speed-limit rule with the rule-about-rules,
and that's when weird things start to happen.
If the speed limit rule is valid, then all inertial grids need to measure the same value for the speed limit.
But remember that one of the allowable transformations for the inertial grid family talks about a
boost, where one inertial grid is moving with respect to another. If two inertial grids are
moving with respect to each other, then how can they possibly agree on the speed of anything?
Most important, how could they measure the same value for the speed limit?
So it appears that the these ideas are a complete flop,
since they seem to contradict each other. But they actually don't contradict each other.
The reasoning above is wrong because it assumes that speeds always behave as they do at low speeds.
They don't. When speeds approach the speed limit, the behavior of
measurements of space and time gets weird. This is the crux of the matter: if you
insist that the speed-limit rule and the rule-about-rules are both valid, then you are
forced into a serious re-examination
of the basic facts regarding measurements of distance and time.
Examples of Fast Objects
| Description | Speed β = v/c
|
|---|
| Jets in microquasars | ~0.95 (max)
|
| Secondary cosmic rays - muons at sea-level | ~0.99 (mean)
|
| Electrons from radioactive decays | ~0.99 (max)
|
| Protons in the Large Hadron Collider | 0.999 999 991
|
| Primary cosmic rays - most energetic | 0.999 999 999 999 999 999 999 995
|
The existence of a speed limit in Nature means we can use it as a natural unit for expressing any other speed
as a simple fraction or percentage of the speed limit.
In relativity, speeds are usually expressed in this way, using the conventional Greek
letter β (beta), as in β = v/c.
When the speed is a significant fraction of c, the motion is said to be relativistic.
If β is nearly 1, then the motion is called ultra-relativistic.
For most people, the speed limit seems incredibly fast.
But in most astronomical contexts, the speed limit is actually very slow, because the distances are so vast.
How much time does it take a photon to go from the Sun to the Earth?
A little over 8 minutes.
Even the Sun itself is so large that a photon needs 4.64s just to go a distance equal to its diameter.
News may travel fast on Earth, but it sure doesn't in space.
See this animation for a simple demonstration.
In English, the words speed and velocity mean the same thing, but
in physics, they don't:
- speed - the speed only, without the direction of motion
- velocity - includes both the speed and the direction of motion, taken together as a unit
The symbol β can be used in both ways.
When it appears in a formula, β is usually treated as a velocity.
When β is a velocity, you just use the sign of the value to indicate the direction
of motion (usually along one of the spatial xyz axes).
It's important to understand that the range of values taken by β depends on whether it's
treated as a speed or a velocity:
- if β is a speed: 0<=β<1
- if β is a velocity: -1<β<1
Geometric Points Have No Speed Limit
The speed limit rule applies to signals - to physical objects moving through space, like a spacecraft, a banana,
or a photon. These are physical objects.
A geometric point isn't a physical object, and doesn't obey the speed limit rule.
Here are some examples of such geometric points:
- lighthouse: a moving spot from a spinning laser, as projected on a distant object like the Moon
- scissors: the moving intersection point of two scissor blades, as the scissors close
- beach: the place where a wave is breaking, as it moves laterally along the shoreline
- oscilloscope: the moving spot on the screen of a cathode-ray oscilloscope
(very similar to the example of the laser on the Moon)
What's moving in these cases is not a single object.
Over time, the moving point is made up of different objects.
For the laser lighthouse, the photons emitted by the laser all travel at the speed limit.
What's moving on the Moon is a collection of different events, represented by different photons
hitting the Moon at a different places, one after the other.
Each photon obeys the speed limit, but the spot on the Moon can travel at any speed,
with no limit.
ct Is Better Than t
There's another way of representing the time on the vertical axis in a space-time diagram.
Instead of using just the time t, you can multiply t by the speed limit c,
and use the result ct.
This is usually the preferred way since it has two pleasant side-effects.
First, the product ct has the unit of length, not time.
As you can see, the seconds cancels out:
(meters/second) x seconds = meters
Thus, the time axis will have the same unit as the 3 space axes (meters, for example).
Second, anything moving at the speed limit will be represented as a line at an angle of
45° with respect to the vertical. Since the speed limit is so important, it's nice to
have it appear in such a simple way. (It's also easy to draw.)
If no object can travel faster than the speed limit c,
then in diagrams using ct instead of t,
the tangent of the history of any moving object can never be at an angle greater than 45° with respect to the vertical.
We know how to draw the history for an object having β=0 (not moving at all) and β=1 (moving at the speed limit).
But what about values of β between 0 and 1? How do you draw those?
Well, that's pretty easy as well.
You can find its angle with respect to the vertical using a simple geometrical construction,
using your space-time diagram and a ruler. The example below is for β=0.3. As you can see, the trick
is to take your ruler and divide the line BC into equal parts.
It's important to understand that the tick marks on BC are evenly spaced, but the corresponding angles with respect to the vertical
are not.
| β | Angle
|
|---|
| 0.60 | 31.0°
|
| 0.70 | 35.0°
|
| 0.75 | 36.9°
|
| 0.80 | 38.7°
|
| 0.90 | 42.0°
|
| 0.95 | 43.5°
|
| 0.99 | 44.7°
|
| β | Angle
|
|---|
| 0.00 | 00.0°
|
| 0.10 | 05.7°
|
| 0.20 | 11.3°
|
| 0.25 | 14.0°
|
| 0.30 | 16.7°
|
| 0.40 | 21.8°
|
| 0.50 | 26.6°
|
Invariant #2 - The Space-Time Interval
There's a second invariant which can be constructed out
of any pair of events A and B whatsoever, using any inertial grid's measurements for the
time interval and space interval (the distance)
between them, combined in a special way.
This number is simply called the space-time interval (or just interval for short).
The square of the interval (and thus the interval itself) is calculated like this:
| Symbol | Means
|
|---|
| s2 | the square of space-time interval between the 2 events
|
| c | the speed limit
|
| Δt | the time interval between the 2 events
|
| Δd | the distance between the 2 events
|
Each pair of events has a value for s2.
The value may be positive, negative, or 0.
When s2 is negative, the value of s is imaginary.
(Warning: people often refer to both s and s2 as the interval, but that's sloppy language.)
To state it explicitly, the rule is this:
The value of s2 for any two events is invariant.
The space-interval Δd has always been parochial:
when one grid is moving with respect to another, then the distance Δd between 2 events will, in general, vary between the 2 grids.
That's not new.
What is new is that the same applies to the time-interval Δt as well.
That's new, because when physics began in the 1600s, the time-interval was assumed to be universal.
But that was a fundamental mistake.
Instead, it's the space-time interval s, constructed from the space-interval Δd and the time-interval Δt, that's really universal, and neither of its parts.
That is, time is parochial, not universal.
Roughly speaking, sometimes time and space can be converted into each other.
You can trade one for the other.
Time intervals can be converted into space-intervals, and vice versa, as long as s2 stays the same.
Another important thing to know about s2 is this:
The formula for s2 defines the geometry of space-time.
Here's a summary of the logical progression so far:
- Inertial grid: In an inertial grid, the speed and direction of motion of an object that's not interacting with anything doesn't change.
- Invariant: If a quantity is measured to be the same in all inertial grids, then it's said to be an invariant quantity.
- Rule about all other rules: Physics rules must be expressible using only invariant quantities.
- Invariant #1: There's an invariant universal speed limit for all signals.
- Invariant #2: The space-time interval between any two events is invariant. Time is relative, not absolute.
(The last rule can actually be seen as a consequence of the preceding two.)
Everything else follows from these basic rules.
All of the space-time diagrams and ideas presented below are essentially ways of helping you think correctly
about the consequences of these rules.
Light-like, Time-like, and Space-like
You begin investigating the structure of space-time simply by looking at the numeric sign of s2.
Since all inertial grids agree on the value of s2, then they must necessarily agree on its sign too.
Take any event A and then calculate s2 between A and
the surrounding events.
You can see that there is a surface where s2 is zero, and this surface separates the regions
where the value of s2 is alternately positive or negative.
The events having s2 = 0 with respect to A are said to have a
light-like relation to A.
In a two-dimensional space-time diagram, they form diagonal lines forming a big 'X' centered on A.
If you add another space dimension, then these events will be in the shape of
two cones with their pointy ends at A, with one opening upwards along the +ct axis,
called the future light cone,
and the other opening downwards along the -ct axis, called the past light cone.
Both of these cones taken together are called the light cone of the event A.
The history of any object travelling through event A at the speed limit will be somewhere
on the light cone of A.
The light cone of event A divides the Universe neatly into two parts:
- the events inside the light cone (that have s2 > 0, with respect to A)
- the events outside the light cone (that have s2 < 0, with respect to A)
The s2 > 0 events are centered on the time-axis.
They are said to have a time-like relation with A.
They are separated into two unconnected regions, according to whether or not the other event happens before or after event A.
The region inside the past light cone is called the absolute past (or just the past) of A,
and the region inside the future light cone is called the absolute future (or just the future) of A.
The s2 < 0 events are centered on the spatial axes.
They are said to have a space-like relation with A.
In the two-dimensional space-time diagram, it looks as if there are two unconnected negative regions,
but that's incorrect. When another space dimension is added (as in the middle diagram above), you can see that it's all connected
together, on the outside of the light cone, and there's only one such negative region, not two.
It's called the absolute elsewhere (or just the elsewhere).
Note that events can't cross over from one region to another when you change grids.
That would violate the rules, since it would change the value of the s2.
For example, if an event is in the past of event A according to one inertial grid,
then it must be in the past of event A for all inertial grids.
Cause And Effect
In space-time diagrams having ct as the time axis,
the history of a signal travelling at the speed limit c
is drawn as a line, 45° with respect to the vertical.
Histories drawn at an angle greater than 45° to the
vertical represent impossible signals, because they represent motions faster than the speed limit.
For an event A and its division of space-time into past, future, and elsewhere,
this rule means:
- event A can be affected by signals from events in its past, and only its past.
- event A can send a signal to events in its future, and only its future.
- none of the events in the elsewhere of event A can either send a signal to A, or receive one from it;
that is, events in the elsewhere of event A cannot interact with event A in any way.
If two events are related as cause and effect, then the cause must always precede the effect.
In a space-time diagram, if event A is the cause of event B, then B must be
able to receive a signal from A; in other words, B must be in the future of A.
For any history, you can construct a light cone at any event along the history.
Again, because of the limiting nature of the speed limit, the entire history will always
remain inside the light cone.
Surfaces With Constant s2
As shown above, the sign s2 defines the basic structure of space-time - the light cone,
the past, the future, and the elsewhere.
But instead of looking at just the sign of s2, let's go a step further and look its value.
What do you get if you insist that s2 is constant with respect to an event A?
Mathematically, this is expressed by the formula:
c2Δt2 - Δd2 = constant
Geometrically, this equation defines a hyperbola in space-time near the event A.
For different values of the constant, you get different hyperbolas.
In a 2-dimensional space-time diagram, the hyperbola is a curve.
If you add another space dimension, the hyperbola is a surface (called a hyperboloid of revolution).
There are two cases, according to the sign of the constant:
- for positive (time-like) values, the hyperbolas 'open up' along the time axis.
- for negative (space-like) values, the hyperbolas 'open up' along the space axis.
The most important point about hyperbolas is that they approach limits: they
get closer and closer to straight lines, called asymptotes, but never actually touch them.
Hyperbolas are said to be asymptotic.
In our case, the light cone is an asymptote.
In special relativity, this sort of asymptotic behavior is seen again and again.
For example, a moving object can approach the speed limit, but it can never reach it (unless it has no mass, like a photon).
If you had to describe space-time using a single word, that word would be hyperbolic.
These surfaces appear repeatedly in special relativity.
Instead of calling them "hyperbolas of constant s2",
this site uses the more concise term interval shell (or simply shell for short).
These space-time diagrams, showing constant s2 with respect to an event,
can actually be viewed or interpreted in two different ways:
- they show multiple events near event A in a single grid (which is what we have done so far)
- or, they show a single event B near event A, but as measured in multiple grids
The second interpretation is usually the more interesting, since it relates directly to one of the main
rules: s2 between any two events is invariant across all inertial grids.
So, you can use these sorts of diagrams to examine how the coordinates of an event B
will change with respect to an event A, when measured in grids that are moving around with respect to
each other.
The event B can change its coordinates with respect to A, but it can only do so
in accordance with the rule that the A-to-B square-interval must remain the same.
In other words,
the coordinates of B relative to A must remain on the same interval shell, as seen from any
inertial grid.
(There's a second rule: in the time-like case, event B is not allowed to go from the
past of A to the future of A, or vice versa.)
Measure Time Dilation
In principle, the measurement of time dilation in the lab is simple.
(See this video from 1962 for a demonstration of measuring time dilation with muons.)
In the following diagram, the clock X moves past two stationary clocks A and B.
Pay attention to 2 events: X coincides with A, and X coincides with B.
For both of these events, you take the readings on the two clocks.
You will have 2 readings for X, and 1 reading each for A and B.
Question: is the time interval between these 2 events the same, as measured by the 1 moving clock, and the 2 stationary clocks?
The answer is no.
It's helpful to write it as a ratio, where the numerator is the difference in readings on
the 2 stationary clocks (A and B), and the denominator is the difference in readings on the 1 moving clock (X).
(B - A) / ΔX
Experimentally, what you find is that the ratio is not 1.0, but greater than 1.0:
(B - A) / ΔX > 1.0
The strangest part of special relativity is this effect, called time dilation.
At low speeds, the ratio is very close to 1.0, and the effect is hard to detect.
But as the moving clock moves faster and faster, the ratio gets larger and larger.
Moving clocks run slowly with respect to stationary clocks.
The Faster The Object, The Slower The Physics
Let's look at time dilation using space-time and intervals.
The effect is this: take any pair of events having a time-like relation.
Then, the time interval between these events can increase without limit,
simply by choosing a different grid.
Pretend you're an astronaut in a spacecraft named Zoomer, moving through space at a speed of β=0.87
with respect to a second spacecraft, named Home Base.
You need to stay in good physical condition, so you exercise every day.
You always start by skipping rope.
(In the weightlessness of space, you are held down by springs, or some other mechanism, as you do this.)
When you skip rope, you count the number of skips you've taken, and your movements are very regular.
In effect, you're acting like a human clock, repeating the same motions with a regular beat.
Let's look at one full skip, and how it appears in space-time diagrams.
There will be two events defining a skip:
- event A: the start of the skip, when the rope hits the floor
- event B: the end of the skip, the next time the rope hits the floor
Let's measure the coordinates of B with respect to A.
In fact, we'll measure them in two sensor grids, one attached to the Zoomer spacecraft,
and a second attached to the Home Base spacecraft.
Here's what you'll see:
The space-time diagram on the right is a bit unusual, since
it combines information from two different grids. This just makes it easier to compare
their measurements.
Note that the event B appears twice in the last diagram, once for each grid.
This is intentional, since it's the exact same event, as measured in the two different grids.
Let's review what these diagrams are saying.
In the Zoomer grid, the events are separated by a time, but not by a distance, since they happen
at the same place.
A typical value for the time between A and B would be about 0.5 seconds, for skipping rope.
The value of the squared interval, for this grid, depends only on the time interval, since the space interval (the distance) is 0:
s2 = c2 * (Δt)2 - (Δx)2
s2 = (300,000)2 * (0.5)2 - 0 km2
The interval shell corresponding to this value is shown in the third diagram above.
It must necessarily connect the two B's on the diagram, because of the
basic rule that says that the square-interval between two events is invariant for all inertial grids.
In the Home Base grid, the events are separated by both a time and a distance, since the
Zoomer spacecraft is
moving swiftly with respect to it.
And, of course, the event B must be on the interval shell.
Next, if you compare just the time interval between A and B,
along the vertical ct axis only,
as measured in the two grids, you can see there's a large disagreement.
If you actually measure it on the screen, you'll see that the Home Base
time interval is twice the Zoomer time interval.
If the Zoomer time interval for skipping the rope is 0.5s, then the Home Base time interval is 1.0s.
(The value of β=0.87 was chosen specifically to get this doubling. For other values of β,
the factor is different.)
You can also see from the shape of the interval shell that the disagreement in
the time intervals is very small when β is small, and gets increasingly large as β increases.
We can draw this stunning conclusion:
The faster the object, the slower the physics.
To restate what we've seen earlier, measurements of time intervals are parochial, not universal.
That is, it's only s2 between two events which is invariant.
The time-interval between events can take different values, according to the grid used to make
the measurements.
Here's a good way to describe time dilation: moving clocks run slowly with respect to stationary clocks.
Does an astronaut on the Zoomer feel anything strange in their experience of time?
No, the astronaut experiences no change at all in their experience.
The fact that the Zoomer is moving with respect to the Home Base
makes no difference at all to the astronauts on the Zoomer.
It's only the measurement of time as seen from the Home Base that slows down.
But, from the point of view of Home Base, those measurements are completely real.
From the perspective of the Home Base, absolutely everything sloooooows doooooown on the Zoomer,
including, for example:
- the motions of the exercising astronaut
- the astronaut's heart rate
- how long it takes a banana in the kitchen to turn brown
- the half-life of radioactive material on board the ship
An excellent mental picture of time dilation comes from musical recordings on magnetic tape.
If the tape is recorded at one speed, and then played back at a slower speed, then the playback
will sound different from the original in two ways:
- the tempo (the beat) will be slower by some factor
- the frequencies of the sounds will all be lowered, also by the same factor
For example, if the playback-speed is exactly half the recording-speed, a high C note becomes a low C note,
played for twice as long.
(The song Strawberry Fields Forever by the Beatles uses such
effects, with different parts of the recording made at slightly different speeds.)
It's important to recall here something mentioned earlier: a grid is a grid of
sensors having synchronized clocks, each of which records only the nearby events.
That is, there are many sensors in a grid, not just one.
So, for our astronaut skipping rope on the Zoomer spacecraft,
the times recorded for the two events A and B in the Home Base grid are recorded by two different sensors.
In fact, the various measurements shown above involve 3 different sensors - one in the Zoomer grid,
and two in the Home Base grid.
Reverse The Perspective
What happens when you reverse the perspective, and
take the Home Base spacecraft as moving at β=0.87 with
respect to the Zoomer spacecraft instead?
You see the same effect - the physics on the moving object goes slowly with respect to stationary clocks.
On the surface, this seems to be a contradiction: how can the physics be slowed down on both
spacecraft at the same time?
It's actually not a contradiction, because there are two things wrong:
- first, the phrase "they are both going slow at the same time" assumes what's not true - that
the passage of time is universal.
- second, you need to examine exactly what's being measured and how.
Each case uses 2 pairs of measurements taken from 3 sensor clocks.
There's no contradiction because the measurements that show the slowing-down are completely different.
To see this, just look at it carefully from both perspectives, and think about how the measurements are made.
In the following diagram, first we have clocks X,Y moving past clocks A,B.
Then we have the opposite perspective on the same situation: clocks A,B moving past clocks X,Y (in the opposite direction, of course).
There are 4 clocks in total, 2 attached to each grid.
To measure the time dilation effect in a given grid, you use only 3 of the 4 clocks, and you ignore the remaining one.
Schematically, you can write it like this, where the numerator is the difference in readings on 2 stationary clocks, and the denominator is
the difference in readings on 1 moving clock.
The main point is that both of these ratios are greater than 1.0:
(B - A) / ΔX > 1.0
(Y - X ) / ΔA > 1.0
(In the first case, we choose to ignore Y, in the second we choose to ignore B.)
SR simply says that these two ratios are equal.
(B - A) / ΔX = (Y - X) / ΔA
But note that the two sides come from different measurements.
That's why there's no contradiction between the two perspectives.
Warp Factor
The above ratio of time intervals is officially called the Lorentz factor,
but here we'll simply call it the warp factor.
It relates to the distortion of times and distances when high speeds are involved.
The traditional symbol for the warp factor is the Greek letter gamma Γ.
(The small gamma 'γ' renders poorly in many browsers, so this site will use a capital gamma
'Γ' instead.)
Like β, you will see the warp factor Γ appearing repeatedly.
The warp factor Γ depends only on β.
It increases slowly from 1, and then increases very rapidly as β approaches 1.
It has no upper limit, and increases without bound.
| β | Γ
|
|---|
| 0.00 | 1.0
|
| 0.75 | 1.5
|
| 0.87 | 2.0
|
| 0.98 | 5.0
|
| 0.99 | 7.1
|
| 0.995 | 10.0
|
The diagram on the left is interesting, since it combines three important things
all in one picture: the speed β, the interval shell, and the warp factor Γ.
Here's a larger version of the same diagram, suitable for printing.
There's also an animated version.
You can use that diagram to find the warp factor corresponding to each value of β, simply by
drawing two lines: one for the speed β, to find its intersection with the hyperbola; then a second line,
going horizontally over to the left, to find the corresponding value of Γ.
Here's an example, using β=0.75, showing that Γ is 1.5:
Measuring Intervals With Only A Single Sensor
In general, space-time intervals are measured with both sensor clocks and meter sticks.
It's also possible to measure any time-like space-time interval with just a single sensor,
but you have to choose the correct grid.
We've already seen an example of this in our skipping rope experiment with the
astronauts on the Zoomer and Home Base spacecraft.
The consolidated space-time diagram for the two events A and B for the astronaut skipping rope
on the Zoomer looked like this:
In the Zoomer grid, the interval was measured just with
a single sensor clock in the Zoomer spacecraft, because there was no distance between the
two events A and B:
s2 = c2 * (Δt)2 - (Δx)2
s2 = c2 * (Δt)2 - 0
s = c * (Δt)
This is true in the Zoomer grid.
But for any grid which is moving with respect to the Zoomer grid,
it's no longer true.
In general:
for any events A and B that have a time-like separation, you can always find a grid in which
the the spatial distance between A and B is 0.
This just corresponds to the 'lowest point' of the interval shell.
In such a grid, the interval is measured
just by a single sensor clock in that grid, located at the same position as A and B.
A time interval measured by such a sensor clock is called proper time, but it's important
to remember that the proper time is just the same old space-time interval, measured in a certain way.
An Object's Wristwatch Measures The Interval
The above can be interpreted in a slightly different way.
Pretend there's a freely moving object moving through a sensor grid.
How can you measure the interval between any two events on the object's history?
Well, there are two ways:
- the hard way: make the usual where and when measurements as it passes through your
grid. Then, for any pair of events, calculate the interval using the interval formula (see above).
- the lazy way: just attach a sensor to the moving object. As it passes through your grid, your grid sensors will talk
to the moving sensor, and ask it for its time reading.
Then, the interval between two events in the object's history is just the difference between two such time readings, multiplied by c.
You can remember this like so:
An object's wristwatch-time is proportional to the interval between events in the object's history.
Time Dilation Revisited
Let's return to the example of the two spacecraft, Zoomer and Home Base.
Let's focus on the history of a single sensor, a sensor belonging to the Zoomer's grid, but let's
record that history in both the Zoomer grid and the Home Base grid.
This is almost the same space-time diagram as before, but now we have a full history of the sensor,
not just two separate events.
In the Zoomer grid, the sensor doesn't move, β=0.
In the Home Base grid, the Zoomer-sensor is moving at β=0.87.
The dots show three ticks of the Zoomer-sensor's clock.
You can easily see the effect of time dilation.
As the Zoomer-sensor passes through the Home Base grid, it shares its
current time reading with the various Home Base sensors it meets along the way.
(Remember that sensors can only record local events.)
Note that the Home Base sensors record an event like this, for example:
at a Home Base time of 6.0s, the
passing Zoomer-sensor says that its own time was 3.0s.
It's important to have this exact picture in your head when thinking about
time dilation.
The clock moves through a sensor grid, and as it moves through the grid,
the moving clock's time is compared with the time on the many grid sensors it meets along the way.
To see the effect of time dilation, you need at least 3 clocks: the moving clock,
and at least 2 grid sensors to compare it to.
This example uses a sensor clock, but the same effect is seen with any object.
If a banana takes 7 days to turn brown on the Zoomer spacecraft, then,
according to the the sensor readings in the Home Base grid, it will take 14 days (if β=0.87).
That is, moving bananas take longer to turn brown.
Three Weeks To The Pleiades
As β gets closer to the speed limit of 1, the value of the warp factor Γ increases without limit.
The warp factor keeps going up, and up, and up, the closer β gets to 1.
The warp factor Γ gives the size of the time dilation effect.
For the Zoomer spacecraft moving with respect to Home Base,
there's no limit to the amount of time dilation seen by Home Base.
For a traveller in Zoomer, the travel-time from one place to another, from their point of view, is
just the time on their wristwatch. (The wristwatch is a sensor in Zoomer's grid.)
So, for the Zoomer-astronaut, the travel-time to any destination can approach zero time.
Here's an example, using a proton in the Large Hadron Collider.
Pretend that one of these protons is sent on a proton vacation to the Pleiades,
a cluster of stars about 385 light-years from Earth.
If you were able to attach a wristwatch to this proton, what would it record as the
travel-time of the proton to the Pleiades?
The answer is given by our friend, the warp factor Γ. Here are the numbers:
β = 0.999 999 991
Γ = 7454
travel-time on the proton's wristwatch:
= 385 years / 7454
= 18 days, 21 hours
This is a stunning fact.
There is a universal speed limit c, but from the point of view
of an actual traveller, this does not limit the travel-time seen by a traveller in any way.
In principle, a traveller's travel-time from any place in the Universe to any other place in the Universe
can be made as small as desired, by getting closer to the speed limit. Zounds!
As β approaches 1 and Γ climbs higher and higher,
the geometry of space-time lets you travel quickly to the stars.
Moving Children Age More Slowly
Imagine that a parent is at home, being annoyed by the children.
"Children, I'm truly thankful for your existence, but at this moment, you are annoying me.
Please go outside and play, while I sit here and have my coffee... Be back in an hour for supper."
Everyone is carrying a device (like a wristwatch, or a phone) that measures the time to an extreeeeeeme accuracy.
Before the children go outside, all of the watches are synchronized, and set to read the same time.
The children run around for a while playing
kick-the-can, and then
go back inside the house.
Everyone compares the time reading on their devices.
What do they see? Well, they see two things:
- the elapsed time for the parent is the greatest
- the elapsed time for the children varies, but is always less than the parent
This is just the effect of time dilation, of course. Moving clocks run slowly with respect to stationary clocks.
Here's a strange fact to chew on: each child's watch reflects how much exercise the child had.
The more running done by the child (either for longer times, or at greater speeds), the greater the warp factor Γ, and the greater
the time difference between the parent's watch and the child's watch.
You can also look an it this way: when you take a trip, the distance travelled is shown
by your odometer.
Everyone knows that its reading depends on the route you took. If you took a longer route, the odometer shows a larger number.
But a similar sort of thing can also be said of the elapsed time on your wristwatch.
If two people leave from event A, separate, and then arrive later simultaneously at event B,
then the elapsed time on their watches won't agree, and will depend on the details of how
they made the trip.
Again, time is parochial.
Rule For Uniform Motion
The above scenario with the playing children
provides a rule to distinguish between accelerated and unaccelerated motion.
In an inertial grid, a freely moving object moves without any acceleration.
It doesn't change speed, and it doesn't change the direction in which it's moving.
In a space-time diagram, the history of a freely moving object is the simplest kind
of history - a straight line, at some angle with respect to the vertical ct axis.
For any such object, we know that we can pick a grid where the object is actually at rest; in that grid,
the history is a vertical line.
So, the above scenario with the children going out to play looks like this in space-time, where,
simply for convenience, we've chosen a grid in which the parent isn't moving:
Everyone's history joins event A to event B.
Everyone starts out at one place-and-time (event A), and then, later, they join up again at the same place (event B).
The history for the stationary parent is vertical,
while the histories for the running children wiggle around the vertical, because they run around while
playing outside.
In other words, the children's histories show accelerated motion, while the parent's history does not.
The histories of the parent and the children form a set of histories that share
a start-event A and an end-event B. Other than that, they can wiggle around a bit in between.
Let's call this a set of wiggle histories.
It's useful to include the parent's history as being just another wiggle history, where
the wiggle happens to be zero.
There are two ways of thinking about the motion of a freely moving object, between two events A and B:
- graphically, uniform motion is just a straight-line history connecting A and B.
- numerically, uniform motion has the maximum reading on a wristwatch attached to the object,
compared to the same reading for any alternative wiggle history between A and B.
This is sometimes called the maximum ageing rule.
As we saw before, the reading on the wristwatch, multiplied by c, is just the space-time interval.
So, you can also say that uniform motion has the maximum total interval in comparison with the
nearby wiggle histories.
Action Principles
The above idea of wiggle histories, along with one history corresponding to a maximum value
of some quantity,
is an example of a action principle.
Fundamental physics often uses an action principle.
They provide powerful and elegant ways of looking at a problem.
They can describe how objects move, or how fields change in space and time.
Action principles appear in many parts of physics:
- classical mechanics
- special relativity
- electrodynamics
- geometrodynamics
- quantum mechanics
Skipping the mathematical details, here's a summary of how an action principle works:
- begin with a start-event A and an end-event B
- pick a wiggle history connecting A and B
- calculate a number for a small part of the wiggle history; this number is called the lagrangian.
- sum up the lagrangian values along the wiggle history; this sum is called the action.
- single out one wiggle history from all the others, as having a minimum (or maximum) value of the action.
In the case of the maximum ageing rule in the previous section, the numbers being added up are the wristwatch time intervals,
along the wiggle histories. The rule is that the total wristwatch time is maximum for the history that
has no wiggle at all.
The invariants we've seen so far are simple - the speed limit c and the space-time interval squared s2.
When you go searching for more invariants, guess what you find?
You find action sums - or action integrals, as they are really called.
That is, the remaining invariants are (mostly) action integrals.
We aren't going to look at these action integrals in detail here.
But to give you a taste, here's the simplest action integral of all, the one for the
motion of a freely moving object:
Here are the details:
- S: the total action
- a and b: the events at the start and end of the history
- m: the (rest) mass of the object
- c: the speed limit
- ds: the interval s for a tiny part of the object's history
Notice that the product mcds is an invariant. This means that the sum S of many such items,
represented by the long ∫ symbol, is also an invariant.
Boost Transformation - Overview
In the inertial grid family,
there are 4 kinds of allowable transformations.
Only one of these transformations involves a speed: the boost transformation,
where one grid is moving with respect to another, at a fixed speed, and in a fixed direction.
The simplest case of a boost looks like this:
These two grids are almost the same.
Their spatial axes (xyz) all point in the same directions, and they share the same event for the origin:
(ct,x,y,z)=(0,0,0,0)
The only difference is that grid 2 (in red) moves along the x-axis, in
either the positive or negative direction, with respect to grid 1 (in black).
Here, β is a velocity - it has both a size (the speed) and a direction (along the + or - x-axis, as indicated by the sign of β).
Given the event coordinates in grid 1, the task is to find the coordinates for the same event
in grid 2, which is moving in this specific way with respect to grid 1.
As always, each event must keep the same interval squared s2 with respect to the origin event.
In each boosted grid, each event will 'flow' along its interval shell.
Let's use one space-time diagram, to show how the coordinates of 4 events (one for each part of space-time near the origin)
will appear in
different grids. The general direction of the flow looks like this:
Notice these things about the flow of events:
- events never cross the light cone
- events always stay within the same space-time region
- during a boost, events flow like toothpaste:
some events are squeezed towards the origin, while others stretch away from it
- the flow is symmetric with respect to the light cone
- when β changes sign, the flow reverses
You can remember the direction of flow by using your hands. Here's an example for β>0:
- put your left hand in front of you, with the palm facing you.
- point your fingers to the right. This indicates the direction of motion of grid 2 (with β>0).
- point your fingers up 45°, to imitate the 'X' of the light cone. (Coincidentally, this is
the most comfortable position when holding your hand in front of your face.)
- imagine squeezing a tube of toothpaste with your hand in that position; this will indicate the direction of the flow of events.
For β<0, you do the same thing, but with your right hand instead of your left.
That's the general picture of how event coordinates change from grid to grid, during a boost.
Boost Transformation - Details
Here are some tools for exploring boost transformations in more detail:
- transform a single event.
- transform multiple events that define a history.
This is an important animation, and you should experiment with it.
There are two ways of finding out the event coordinates in the boosted grid:
- use a geometrical construction
- use a formula
Both of these ways depend on just two numbers, our old friends β and Γ.
Let's start with the geometrical construction.
Here are two examples, for β=+0.5 (grid 2 moving to the right), and β=-0.5 (grid 2 moving to the left):
These space-time diagrams are a bit unusual, since they have two sets of axes.
The blue set of axes (for grid 2) is at an angle with respect to the black set of axes (for grid 1).
Don't attach too much importance to the distorted appearance of grid 2.
The distortion isn't "real", it's just how grid 2 looks with respect to grid 1.
From grid 2's point of view, grid 1 looks distorted, in a similar but reciprocal way (with β having the opposite sign).
The geometrical construction combines two things you've already seen before:
- Find the directions of the axes, using β.
This is done using the same technique as before, with β marked off on a
horizontal scale, from the ct axis to the light cone.
The sign of β controls which way the angle goes - to the left or the right of the ct axis.
The angle between the ct and ct' axes is the same as the angle between the x and x' axes.
- Find the scale of the axes, using Γ.
Above, the scale of each axis is shown by regularly spaced dots.
If you look closely, you'll see that the blue dots have a slightly larger spacing, controlled by the value
of Γ. In our case β=0.5, and Γ=1.15. So, the spacing of the blue dots is 1.15 times the spacing
of the black dots. As we've seen already, you can find the value of Γ by construction
using this graph. (Or, you can just use the formula for Γ.)
- From the event whose coordinates you want to find in grid 2, draw lines parallel to the new axes, and
read off the corresponding numbers on the ct' axis and the x' axis.
It's interesting that this geometrical construction exists.
But because the axes are bent, it's not possible to get a good feel for how histories really appear in
the second grid, with perpendicular axes.
Instead of this geometric construction, you can also easily calculate the event coordinates in grid 2.
This will give you a better picture of how histories appear in a boosted grid.
As you would expect from the above, the formulas depend only on c, β, and Γ :
Here, the primed grid moves with velocity β along the x-axis with respect to the unprimed grid.
The inverse transformation is found simply by switching the sign of β.
Remember that -1<β<1. That is, β is the velocity along the x axis, not just the speed.
It can be either positive (grid 2 moving in the +x direction) or negative (grid 2 moving in the -x direction).
These equations describe how an event changes coordinates during a boost from
one inertial grid to another. Let's call these equations the boost transformation
(also called the Lorentz transformation).
Time Order Can Change
We're usually concerned with time-like intervals, since only time-like intervals occur along the history
of an object. Let's take a look at space-like intervals for a moment.
Here's a reminder of what the interval shell looks like for a space-like interval.
As usual, we have an origin event A, and an event B having a space-like separation from A.
That is, event B is in the absolute elsewhere of A:
This shell shows the set of possible coordinates for event B, as seen from different grids
that are moving with respect to each other.
Notice that event B can come before A (appears lower than A in the diagram), or it can come after A
(appears higher than A in the diagram). It can also come at the same time as A (simultaneous).
In other words, the time order of events having a space-like interval is not invariant.
It can change between different grids.
Also, if two events with a space-like interval are simultaneous in one grid, then they will not be
simultaneous in a boosted grid.
Earlier, we made some remarks above about cause and effect.
Events that might be related by cause and effect must be in each other's light cone.
They also have to keep the same order in time: the cause must always come before the effect.
With space-like intervals, the opposite is the case. In summary:
| | Time-like | Space-like
|
|---|
| Time order is invariant | yes | no
|
| Cause-effect relation allowed | yes | no
|
Length Contraction
A grid measures the coordinates of events, and it can easily measure the distance between two events.
But how does it measure the distance between two objects, when they may be moving around?
To measure the distance between two objects, you first need their histories.
Then you pick a time, and draw a corresponding horizontal line ct=constant in space-time.
The horizontal line will connect the two histories, and the distance between the
two objects at that time is then just the Δx along that horizontal line.
Let's return to the Zoomer and Home Base spacecraft,
and look at the spatial dimensions (the size) of the Zoomer spacecraft.
In the Zoomer grid, the dimensions of the Zoomer spacecraft have some fixed values.
If we take the direction of motion of the Zoomer spacecraft as the x-direction, then
we might say, for example, that it has these dimensions:
- Δx=20 meters long (in the direction of motion)
- Δy=8 meters wide
- Δz=5 meters high
Does the Home Base grid measure the same dimensions in its grid, for the
moving Zoomer spacecraft? Nope. It measures these dimensions:
- Δx=20/Γ meters long (in the direction of motion)
- Δy=8 meters wide
- Δz=5 meters high
For y and z, the dimensions are the same.
For the dimension in the direction of motion,
the size is divided by Γ (with Γ calculated using the speed of Zoomer), and is smaller,
since Γ is greater than or equal to 1.
The same can be said of the volume of the Zoomer spacecraft
as well: the volume is also divided by the same number Γ.
This effect is called length contraction.
Note that it takes place in a specific direction, the direction of motion.
Both time dilation and length contraction have the same underlying cause: the geometry of space-time.
You can think of both of these effects as being two aspects of the same thing.
An ultra-relativistic ball appears like a pancake: when measured in the lab, its size along its
direction of motion will be less than that of an identical, stationary ball, by a factor of Γ.
Of course, in the rest frame of the ball, the ball remains round.
The effects of time dilation and length contraction are real, but they come from the geometry of space-time, not
from physical changes in the objects themselves.
Both time intervals Δt and space intervals (distances) Δx are parochial.
They change values from one grid to another.
The values of Δt and Δx in any one grid have no special status.
For example, the assertion that the Pleiades has a specific distance of 385 light years from the Earth
is a parochial statement attached to a specific
grid, a grid comoving with the Earth.
In other grids, moving with high Γ with respect to
the Earth, and in the direction of the Pleiades, it's a different story:
the effect of length contraction changes the distance to the Pleiades,
and divides it by the value of Γ.
Dilation Versus Contraction
Dilation means getting bigger, and contraction means getting smaller.
- time dilation: the time it takes for a clock to tick gets bigger (multiply by Γ) when it's moving
- length contraction: the length of a moving stick gets smaller (divide by Γ) in the direction it's moving
It's useful to look at space-time diagrams to see why times and lengths change in opposite ways.
The diagrams show the events for the Lab grid (in which the clock/stick is moving), and the Rest grid (in which the clock/stick is not moving).
You can see there is asymmetry.
In the first diagram, the apex of the hyperbola is for the Rest grid.
The value of cΔt is bigger (multiply by Γ) in the Lab grid than in the Rest grid.
In the second diagram, the apex of the hyperbola is for the Lab grid.
The value of Δx is smaller (divide by Γ) in the Lab grid than the Rest grid.
Does It Really Dilate/Contract?
There are two common questions:
- does the moving clock really slow down?
- does the moving stick really get shorter?
In SR, the short answer to these two does-it-really questions is yes, while the long answer is:
- the measurements depend both on the state of the clock/stick at rest and on how the clock/stick is moving with respect to the chosen grid
- measurements are always real; measurements made in one grid are just as real as measurements made in any other grid
The measurements are relative: they don't depend solely on the thing itself.
The measurements depend both on the thing itself, and on how the thing is moving through a specific grid.
These two does-it-really questions are ambiguous.
There are at least two possible points points of view the questioner may have:
- the measurements can't show different results (the absolute or Newtonian point of view)
- the measurements can show different results, but one is somehow real while the other is not
Both of these points of view are incorrect.
Invariant #3: Volumes in Space-Time
As seen above, the boost transformation makes events flow like toothpaste in space-time.
Some pairs of events are stretched out, while others are squeezed together.
When you consider volumes of space-time, then these two effects actually cancel each other out.
The volume of a region of space-time is invariant.
A volume of space-time is defined by a closed boundary of some sort.
Roughly speaking, the boundary needs to "go in a circle" in order to get back to where it started.
You can't make such closed boundaries using only histories, because histories can't go in loops.
(Any loops in a history would imply speeds faster than the speed limit, which is against the rules.)
But you can make a space-time volume using a mixture of histories and non-histories, as shown above.
In the above diagram for Grid 1 on the left, the vertical sides are histories, while the horizontal sides are not.
You can measure the areas of the two grey areas shown above: they are the same.
(The area of a parallelogram is 'base times height'.)
A space-time volume has different units, depending on the number
of dimensions you're using:
- 2-dimensional (ct, x): meters2 (an area)
- 3-dimensional (ct,x,y): meters3 (an actual volume)
- 4-dimensional (ct,x,y,z): meters4 (there's no standard name for this)
It's interesting to note that the "flow" of space-time volumes resembles
the flow of an incompressible fluid.
Time Machines and Wormholes
If a civilization can engineer spacecraft that can travel at very high speeds, where Γ takes a
large value, then the effects of time dilation and length contraction will significantly
affect the experience of travellers.
As a threshold for high-Γ travel, you might take the value Γ=2, corresponding to β=0.87.
To the traveller, high-Γ travel is experienced as a combination of wormhole
and time machine.
When you travel from the Earth to another star with high Γ, your travel time will be shrunken by time
dilation.
Alternatively, you could say that the distance to the star is changed by length contraction, in the direction of travel.
Either way, when Γ is sufficiently high, the result is that you arrive at the destination much more quickly
than you would have without these effects.
In the language of science-fiction, the trip feels as if you've passed through a
wormhole - a weird short-cut through space.
(As well, you will also see optical distortions in the directions of the stars when you look out the window
of the spacecraft.)
After the travellers have reached the other star, then, in a grid attached to the Earth,
the travellers are also in the deep future. From the Earth's perspective, it's taken a long time for
the travellers to reach their destination.
From the traveller's perspective, they will know intellectually that they are now in Earth's
deep future, but they won't feel it in their bones:
when they turn their radio telescopes back towards the Earth, they will pick up transmissions that were
emitted long ago.
To the traveller, nothing very strange will be seen in the apparent date of these transmissions.
Of course, if they make the return trip back to the Earth, that impression will be corrected, and
they will finally experience the time-machine aspects of high-speed travel.
| Machine | How To Build It
|
|---|
| Wormhole | high-Γ travel, one-way trip
|
| Time machine into the future | high-Γ travel, return trip (also: return trip to a black hole)
|
| Time machine into the past | strictly forbidden, reverses cause-and-effect
|
In practice, such machines don't exist, because it's extremely difficult to accelerate a large mass to such high speeds (and high accelerations will kill paltry humans).
But, the rules of physics allow for their construction in principle.
For Hollywood movies, the only problem is that time-travel into the past is strictly forbidden.
The Here-And-Now Is Stretched Out
In ordinary geometry, each point in space is a certain non-zero distance from all other points.
In the hyperbolic geometry of space-time, however, the same cannot be said of events.
In space-time, each event A has its light cone, the set of events having light-like (zero) intervals with respect to A.
The event A is, roughly speaking, "nearby" these other events, and those other events
are stretched out across the Universe.
Of course, to take advantange of the "closeness" of the events on the future light cone,
travellers need to have a high value of Γ.
If you take seriously the idea that no one member of the inertial grid family has special status,
then the fact that high speeds are needed is seen as a detail.
Is Time The Fourth Dimension?
Yes and no.
As we saw in the beginning, the basic idea of space-time is a pretty simple one.
You just translate times into distances, in order to draw a picture of an object's history.
In this rather trivial sense, yes, time is treated as a fourth dimension.
But there's nothing deep or strange about that.
Is time a kind of fourth spatial dimension?
Definitely not. Here's why:
- times are measured with clocks, not meter sticks
- the geometry of space-time is defined by the formula for s2.
In that formula, time and space are not treated the same - there's a difference in sign.
The time is not treated as just another space coordinate.
Because of this, many people refer to space-time as having a 3+1 structure, to emphasize the difference.
Space-Time Geometry Constrains The Rules
To create new rules that are compatible with special relativity, you
need to express them using invariants.
The boost transformation is the template for building all other invariants:
The basic facts about the boost transformation are:
- it transforms one set of 4 numbers (ct,x,y,z) to another set of 4 numbers (ct',x',y',z').
- the 4 numbers (ct,x,y,z) share the same units
- it uses only β and Γ, which are both dimensionless - they have no unit, and are pure numbers.
- mathematically, it guarantees the invariance of this quantity, built out of the 4 parts: c2t2 - (x2 + y2 + z2). This is
just the squared interval with respect to the origin event (0,0,0,0).
You can treat these equations as a little machine that translates one set of 4 numbers into
another set of 4 numbers (with the above restriction about the units).
Let's label the 4 numbers as (a,b,c,d), with 'a' corresponding to 'ct'.
If these 4 numbers satisfy the boost transformation, then, mathematically, this quantity must also be an invariant:
a2 - (b2 + c2 + d2)
If you find a new 4-pack of numbers that behaves according to the rules of this little machine,
then you will also have found a corresponding new invariant.
These 4-packs are called 4-vectors.
The game played by physicists is to make guesses about new rules, with new 4-vectors, and their corresponding invariants.
They then see if those guesses are in agreement with experiment.
It's stunning that the geometry of space-time so tightly constrains the creation of new rules.
Electrodynamics Pops Out Of Special Relativity
As stated above, any rule that claims to be compatible with special relativity must be expressible using invariants.
So, you can play at simply guessing new rules, by imagining equations that are compatible with the rule-about-rules.
Of course, such guesses may or may not agree with experiment.
These guesses can take many forms. One of the simplest such guesses is this (don't worry about the details):
Does this correspond to anything in Nature?
Yes. This precisely describes motion of a particle in an electromagnetic field!
In fact, all of the equations of electrodynamics (electricity and magnetism) are expressed most elegantly using the
language of space-time and 4-vectors.
Boost Velocity
Velocity is a vector, and has both direction and speed.
During a boost transformation, the xyz components of the velocity vector change from one grid to another.
Of course, this transformation follows the rule that the speed of any object cannot exceed the speed limit.
This always remains true, no matter how big the boost, and no matter how big the original speed in the unboosted grid.
This animation demonstrates how the velocity changes during
a boost transformation. Note that:
- the boosted speed never exceeds the speed limit (the large outer circle).
- when the object's speed is 1 in the unboosted grid, its speed remains 1 in the boosted grid.
- when the object's speed is 1, only the direction of the velocity vector changes. In this case,
the transformation of velocity leads to the aberration of light.
Three Core Items Are Dimensionless
There are 3 core numbers in SR, and they're all dimensionless (they have no units).
Dimensionless quantities are infrequent in physics, so perhaps this fact is noteworthy.
β is dimensionless simply because it's defined as a ratio of speeds.
Γ and D are also dimensionless, but they aren't simple ratios.
D is the Doppler factor, discussed in Part II.
Avoid Common Pitfalls
The word observer is dangerous
The idea you have of an inertial grid (frame of reference) needs to be crystal clear.
It's critical that you make the distinction between a grid (used in the core theory) and a single camera (used in optics).
This isn't a small detail.
You need to know about this distinction.
If you don't know about it, then you don't understand the theory well.
Many authors use the term observer to refer to a grid or frame of reference.
This is probably a bad idea.
The word observer has exactly the wrong connotation for a frame of reference.
It puts the wrong image into your head. A grid needs to fill space, with many meter sticks and synchronized clocks.
The word observer does not push you toward that image.
It pushes you in the exact opposite direction, toward a camera, not a grid.
That's not good.
Relativistic mass is a mistake
The term relativistic mass is an error.
The mass of an object is an invariant.
The mass of an object doesn't change according to which grid it's measured in.
When an object is moving at 0.99c in some grid, it's also moving at speed 0 in its own rest-frame.
In that rest frame, its mass is just the same as it has always been.
The fact that an object becomes harder to accelerate at high speeds doesn't reflect a change in the object's mass.
It reflects the structure of space-time.
The minimal travel-time isn't limited by c
Many people have gone through the ideas of SR, but without fully internalizing what it means.
The best example of this are remarks like the following: "The Pleiades are 400 light-years away.
So, travelling at the speed limit, it will take a minimum of 400 years to get there."
This is wrong (at least in its unqualified form). According the traveller's clock (which is what the traveller cares about),
the time will be less than 400 years, if they are travelling at ultra-relativistic speeds, because of time dilation.
Indeed, there's no lower limit to the travel-time, according to the traveller's clock.
s2 isn't the same as s
The interval s is the square root of s2.
In most contexts, it's s2 that's significant.
It's easy to refer to s2 as the interval.
But that's sloppy language, because s2 is the square-interval, not the interval.
(This is a bit pedantic, but it's still worth noting.)
End of Part I
This concludes Part I, which covers the fundamental ideas of special relativity.
Please continue on to Part II, which explores light signals and optics.
One of the deepest ideas in physics relates these sorts of transformations with things called conservation rules.
(It's called Noether's Theorem, after Emmy Noether.)
A conservation rule is a rule that states that some physical quantity (a number) doesn't change over time.
There's a deep connection between
conservation rules and ideas of symmetry (transformations which leave things unchanged).
Here are the most important ones: