Talk:Special relativity/Archive 17

message: The special theory of relativity was proposed in 1905 by Albert Einstein in his article "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies". 
Please note that Einstein did not, in fact, live or was conceived in 1905.
Zeroxy 04:26, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, Einstein was born in 1879 and was 26 years old in 1905 when relativity theory was published.
This introduction is misleading and technically incorrect for a purist. The 1905 paper is not special relativity in the sense we know it but a larger theory which introduced the special relativity theory as an introductory kinematical theory prepatory to the electrodynamics theory. The term "Theory of Relativity" is first used by Einstein only in his 1911 paper in which it is made clear that this term applies to the kinematical part of his 1905 theory. So what we call special relativity is really a subset of the entire theory. But common usage has come to apply this term to the kinematical and the electrodynamical parts of Einstein's theory. 
Many people fail to realise that Einstein's theory is not contained in the 1905 paper alone, and thus fail to read his other papers of 1907 (this is really the most important one of all, more so than the 1905 paper), and the papers of 1910 and 1911, which discuss the relationship of the theory to the problem of the ether in greater detail. All of them should be read as well as the 1912 unpublished version which has only recently been published. The reader is urged to consult Einstein's Papers, a set of books which contains these papers as well as those on general relativity and other interesting bits of information. 72.84.67.164 15:13, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  1905? 

message: I am confused a bit by relativity so I have a question. It stems from a lot of things, most  noteably a film I saw on YouTube, of all  places! It explains Special Relativity by giving an example of a moving train, which from the stationary observer's point of view was hit by lightning simultaneously and from the observer in the train the train was struck first of all by the one in the front and then the one on the back - but isn't that merely an optical illusion? I shall explain my reasoning. The stationary observer will have seen the truth of the matter as the light at the front would have less distance to travel by the pace the train was travelling at would fool the moving observer.fleebfleeb
::Hello confused. ask yourself how can you tell which observer is moving and which one isn`t. if you can`t answer that question, your reasoning falls apart.Dauto 02:48, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: This talk page is for discussions about the content and the format of the article. It is not for helping you understand the subject of the article. Your question stands a good chance of getting properly and adequately answered on Usenet group sci.physics.relativity. Good luck. DVdm 21:02, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Confusion. Help needed 

message: In the sentence Since there is no absolute reference frame in relativity theory, a concept of 'moving' doesn't strictly exist, as everything is always moving with respect to some other reference frame., should concept of 'moving' be concept of 'stationary'?  I'm no expert in this field but it felt like it read incorrectly.  I say this because you then introduce the concept of 'comoving' which seems to replace 'stationary' with a more accurate term, rather than 'moving'. 194.203.31.210 09:09, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I do not see any section named special relativity#comoving. Could you be more specific about where it is? JRSpriggs 11:12, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Section on 'comoving' 

message: What was meant is the mutual potential energy of unbound particles or potential energy of the particles in an external field. The mutual potential energy of two particles contributes to the (invariant)mass of the two particle system, not to the mass of the individual particles. 
::No. According to NPOV refs. and the energy-momentum equation (E² = m² + p²), the sentence "The mutual potential energy of two particles contributes to the (invariant)mass of the two particle system" is better left unsaid. Edgerck 17:01, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: In that case, I suggest we dump these so-called "NPOV refs" as they cannot be used to let someone gain an understanding of special relativity.  Count Iblis 18:29, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  "potential energy is included in mass" 

message: There has been some discussion here about whether it is ok to break up one editor's comments by interspersing them with responses.  My reading of WP:TALK#Others.27_comments indicates that such action counts as editing another users comments and that it should generally be avoided  (see the policy on Interruptions). Timb66 23:12, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Editing others' comments 

message: Count Ibis wrote: "If you read the actual paper they put on the arXiv, then you see that what they have measured is an predicted effect. In no way does this violate causality"  I'm sure you are right, but surely such an announcment is noteworthy and a mention could be included in the article? Timb66 04:49, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I googled for the statement by Dr. Nimtz: "For the time being, this is the only violation of special relativity that I know of" and found that it was reported in 298 different sources. Superluminality doesn't violate causality. Properly understood, superluminality only violates the principle of relativity. --e.Shubee 11:15, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

text: I very much agree with Count Iblis on this issue.  With breaking news, the best thing to do is to give the dust a chance to clear and to allow some time to gain some perspective on the matter.  New findings are often hyped by their discoverers to gain attention and funding for more research.  Furthermore, news sources will often pile on with the hype into order to sell more product.  "Special relativity violated" is a much more grabbing headine than "Odd QM effect reported that may violate special relativity".  So my advice is to take this with a grain of salt and see if it even makes it into a decent journal and also what it says if and when it is published in a serious journal. --EMS | Talk 19:03, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Erroneous, misinterpreted, or otherwise misleading experimental results are not unusual. So as a general principle, I think that we should wait until an unexpected result has been replicated by other scientists before we mention it in a mainstream article like this one. JRSpriggs 00:36, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The preprint is odd.  For example, the title bar of my pdf reader has "Macroscopic experiments with virtual photons" but the title on the first page reads "Macroscopic violation of special relativity".  Further, in the abstract, there is: "The evanescent modes (i.e. tunneling) lie outside the bounds of the special theory of relativity.  [we] show that evanescent modes are well described by virtual photons as predicted by former QED calculations."  It occurs to me that the original title is a much more accurate description than the 'sensational' title that it was apparently changed to.  Alfred Centauri 00:47, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Violation? 

message: Although the article does state what Special relativity is in the first paragraph, it doesn't exactly do so very quickly (should be first sentence ?) - cf. General relativity. I'd like to fix this. However, as I'm not a regular editor of this article, and before I start potentially messing things up and arguing with people, has this point been discussed before ? Thanks. MP (talk•contribs) 22:24, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree, the intro states when SP was proposed, but not what it is, although it is obvious. It needs to state that it is a theory of physics first. Beast of traal T C _ 17:28, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: What is not currently made clear is that relativity, like quantum mechanics and thermodynamics, is not an ordinary physical theory which merely describes a particular phenomenon, e.g. bulk modulus. Rather they are second-order theories which constrain all acceptable physical theories. JRSpriggs 04:30, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  intro. to article