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e. In physics, the special theory of relativity, or special relativity for short, is a scientific theory of the relationship between space and time. In Albert Einstein 's 1905 paper, On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies, the theory is presented as being based on just two postulates: [p 1][1][2] The laws of physics are invariant (identical ...
[Note 6] This invariance of the speed of light was postulated by Einstein in 1905, [8] after being motivated by Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism and the lack of evidence for motion against the luminiferous aether. [19] It has since been consistently confirmed by many experiments.
Einstein's special theory is not the only theory that combines a form of light speed constancy with the relativity principle. A theory along the lines of that proposed by Heinrich Hertz (in 1890) [17] allows for light to be fully dragged by all objects, giving local c-constancy for all physical observers.
The theory of relativity usually encompasses two interrelated physics theories by Albert Einstein: special relativity and general relativity, proposed and published in 1905 and 1915, respectively. [ 1 ] Special relativity applies to all physical phenomena in the absence of gravity. General relativity explains the law of gravitation and its ...
The clock hypothesis was implicitly (but not explicitly) included in Einstein's original 1905 formulation of special relativity. Since then, it has become a standard assumption and is usually included in the axioms of special relativity, especially in light of experimental verification up to very high accelerations in particle accelerators. [32 ...
In special relativity, an object that has nonzero rest mass cannot travel at the speed of light. As the object approaches the speed of light, the object's energy and momentum increase without bound. In the first years after 1905, following Lorentz and Einstein, the terms longitudinal and transverse mass were still in use.
In the remainder of Einstein's 1911 paper, he discussed the bending of light rays in a gravitational field, but given the incomplete nature of Einstein's theory as it existed at the time, the value that he predicted was half the value that would later be predicted by the full theory of general relativity. [27] [28]
In physics, the relativity of simultaneity is the concept that distant simultaneity – whether two spatially separated events occur at the same time – is not absolute, but depends on the observer's reference frame. This possibility was raised by mathematician Henri Poincaré in 1900, and thereafter became a central idea in the special theory ...