Einstein's Theories of Relativity and Gravitation: A selection of material from the essays submitted in the competition for the Eugene Higgins prize of $5,000Bird, J. Malcolm (James Malcolm)
Philosophy
Einstein's Theories of Relativity and Gravitation: A selection of material from the essays submitted in the competition for the Eugene Higgins prize of $5,000
Bird, J. Malcolm (James Malcolm)
Relativity (Physics)
Although all unaccelerated frames of reference are equivalent for
the purposes of mechanical laws, this is not the case for physical
laws generally as long as the above suppositions are adhered
to. Electromagnetic laws do alter their form according to the motion
of the frame of reference; that is to say, if these suppositions are
true, electromagnetic agencies act in different ways according to the
motion of the system in which they occur. There is nothing a priori
impossible in this, but it does not agree with experiment. The motion
of each locality on the earth is continually changing from hour to
hour but no corresponding changes occur in electromagnetic actions. It
has however been ascertained that on discarding these suppositions
the difficulty disappears, and electromagnetic laws retain their
form under all circumstances of unaccelerated motion. According
to the theory of relativity, the correct view which replaces these
suppositions is deducible from the following postulates:
(1) By no experiment conducted on his own system can an observer
detect the unaccelerated motion of his system.
(2) The measure of the velocity of light in vacuo is unaffected
by relative motion between the observer and the source of light.
Both these postulates are well established by experiment. The first
may be illustrated by the familiar difficulty of determining whether a
slowly moving train one happens to be sitting in, or an adjacent one,
is in motion. The passenger has either to wait for bumps (that is,
accelerations) or else he has to look out at some adjacent object which
he knows to be fixed, such as a building (that is, he has to perform
an experiment on something outside his system), before he can decide.
The second postulate is an obvious consequence of the wave theory of
light. Just as waves in water, once started by a ship, travel through
the water with a velocity independent of the ship, so waves in space
travel onward with a speed bearing no relation to that of the body
which originated them. The statement however is based on experiment,
and can be proved independently of any theory of light.
It is not difficult to deduce from these postulates certain remarkable
conclusions relating to the systems of two observers, A and B, in
relative motion, among them the following:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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