Relativity and Cosmology

    

Deducing Special Relativity from Newtonian Physics

Authors: George Nigel Newcomen Martin

Explanations of the special theory of relativity usually start from an assumption that the speed of light is a constant for all observers, and use that to work out the Lorentz transform. I show that it is not necessary to make any assumption about the speed of light. This is useful because that assumption sometimes misleads people. If they have difficulty accepting the predictions of the special theory, they are tempted to doubt that the speed of light is always constant, and to conclude that we just haven’t tried hard enough to find the exceptions. And if we assume that the theory of relativity depends on the constancy of the speed of light, then it invites speculation about what would happen if the speed of light changed.

Comments: 6 Pages.

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Submission history

[v1] 2016-07-18 16:48:12
[v2] 2019-01-19 13:29:12

Unique-IP document downloads: 220 times

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