The history of special relativity consists of many theoretical results and empirical findings obtained by Albert A. Michelson, Hendrik Lorentz, Henri Poincaré and others. It culminated in the theory of special relativity proposed by Albert Einstein and subsequent work of Max Planck, Hermann Minkowski and others.
Although Isaac Newton based his physics on absolute time and space, he also adhered to the principle of relativity of Galileo Galilei restating it precisely for mechanical systems. This can be stated as: as far as the laws of mechanics are concerned, all observers in inertial motion are equally privileged, and no preferred state of motion can be attributed to any particular inertial observer. However, as to electromagnetic theory and electrodynamics, during the 19th century the wave theory of light as a disturbance of a "light medium" or luminiferous aether was widely accepted, the theory reaching its most developed form in the work of James Clerk Maxwell. According to Maxwell's theory, all optical and electrical phenomena propagate through that medium, which suggested that it should be possible to experimentally determine motion relative to the aether.
The failure of any known experiment to detect motion through the aether led Hendrik Lorentz, starting in 1892, to develop a theory of electrodynamics based on an immobile luminiferous aether (about whose material constitution Lorentz did not speculate), physical length contraction, and a "local time" in which Maxwell's equations retain their form in all inertial frames of reference. Working with Lorentz's aether theory, Henri Poincaré, having earlier proposed the "relativity principle" as a general law of nature (including electrodynamics and gravitation), used this principle in 1905 to correct Lorentz's preliminary transformation formulas, resulting in an exact set of equations that are now called the Lorentz transformations.
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Le but du cours de physique générale est de donner à l'étudiant.e les notions de base nécessaires à la compréhension des phénomènes physiques. L'objectif est atteint lorsque l'étudiant.e est capable d
Le but du cours de physique générale est de donner à l'étudiant les notions de base nécessaires à la compréhension des phénomènes physiques. L'objectif est atteint lorsque l'étudiant est capable de pr
Philosophie de la nature : Physique et philosophie au XXe siècle.
Le cours se centre sur les grandes théories physiques du XXe siècle, à savoir les théories de la relativité d'Einstein et la physique
In physics, Albert Einstein derived the theory of special relativity in 1905 from principle now called the postulates of special relativity. Einstein's formulation is said to only require two postulates, though his derivation implies a few more assumptions. The idea that special relativity depended only on two postulates, both of which seemed to be follow from the theory and experiment of the day, was one of the most compelling arguments for the correctness of the theory (Einstein 1912: "This theory is correct to the extent to which the two principles upon which it is based are correct.
Special relativity is a physical theory that plays a fundamental role in the description of all physical phenomena, as long as gravitation is not significant. Many experiments played (and still play) an important role in its development and justification. The strength of the theory lies in its unique ability to correctly predict to high precision the outcome of an extremely diverse range of experiments. Repeats of many of those experiments are still being conducted with steadily increased precision, with modern experiments focusing on effects such as at the Planck scale and in the neutrino sector.
The annus mirabilis papers (from Latin annus mīrābilis, "miracle year") are the four papers that Albert Einstein published in Annalen der Physik (Annals of Physics), a scientific journal, in 1905. These four papers were major contributions to the foundation of modern physics. They revolutionized science's understanding of the fundamental concepts of space, time, mass, and energy. Because Einstein published these remarkable papers in a single year, 1905 is called his annus mirabilis (miracle year in English or Wunderjahr in German).
En Suisse, comme dans la majorité des pays avoisinants, les territoires périurbains sont révélateurs des limites diffuses entre la ville et la campagne. Depuis plusieurs décennies, le caractère diffus des périphéries urbaines suscite d’incontournables inte ...
Presses polytechniques et universitaires romandes2022
We provide a theoretical description of dynamical heterogeneities in glass-forming liquids, based on the premise that relaxation occurs via local rearrangements coupled by elasticity. In our framework, the growth of the dynamical correlation length e and o ...
This paper develops high-order accurate entropy stable (ES) adaptive moving mesh finite difference schemes for the two- and three-dimensional special relativistic hydrodynamic (RHD) and magnetohydrodynamic (RMHD) equations, which is the high-order accurate ...