Relativity and Cosmology

   

Reexamining the Thomas Precession

Authors: Marcelo Ferreira Lima Carvalho

We review the Thomas precession exhibiting the exact form of the Thomas rotation in the axis-angle parameterization. Assuming three inertial frames $S, S', S''$ moving with arbitrary velocities and with $S, S''$ having their axis parallel to the axis of $S'$ we focus our attention on the two essential elements of the Thomas precession e.g., (i) there is a rotation between the axis of frames $S$, $S''$ and (ii) the combination of two Lorentz transformations from $S$ to $S'$ and from $S'$ to $S''$ fails to produce a pure Lorentz transformation from $S$ to $S''$. The physical consequence of (i) and (ii) refers to the impossibility of having arbitrary frames $S, S', S''$ moving with their axis mutually parallel. Then, we reexamine the validity of (i) and (ii) under the conjecture the time depends on the state of motion of the frames and we show that the Thomas precession assumes a different form as formulated in (i) and (ii).

Comments: 61 Pages.

Download: PDF

Submission history

[v1] 2020-02-29 20:18:42

Unique-IP document downloads: 214 times

Vixra.org is a pre-print repository rather than a journal. Articles hosted may not yet have been verified by peer-review and should be treated as preliminary. In particular, anything that appears to include financial or legal advice or proposed medical treatments should be treated with due caution. Vixra.org will not be responsible for any consequences of actions that result from any form of use of any documents on this website.

Add your own feedback and questions here:
You are equally welcome to be positive or negative about any paper but please be polite. If you are being critical you must mention at least one specific error, otherwise your comment will be deleted as unhelpful.

comments powered by Disqus