Look Who it Was Random video

A Unified Approach to Analyzing Intervals in Space-time

308 views · Published 24 April 2017 · 14:35 · Indexed 18 October 2026

Channel: Doug Sweetser · 2017 · Science & Technology

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This talk was presented at the Spring 2017 New England APS Meeting held at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Imagine 3 people watching 2 events: a ref, someone moving at a constant speed toward the ref, and a third floating high above the ref. All three have highly accurate devices to measure the difference in time and space between the two events.  The Ref also needs a radar clock and ruler to tell what he thinks is going on with the other observers.

How would the ref deal with the other two observers of the same events?

He would use special relativity to understand the one approaching at a steady speed. The Poincare group is used to transform the 4-vector leaving the metric alone. He would use General Relativity, a set of 10 nonlinear field equations, to understand the elevated observer.

In this talk, I use an old and underappe

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