Knowledge | Special Relativity

Tôi bắt đầu lọat bài đi tìm hiểu lại về Thuyết Tương Đối của Einstein. Hồi năm 1 đại học, tôi tự cho là mình hiểu và tôi đã từng có những ví dụ rất thuyết phục (chính tôi) để chứng tỏ sự hiểu biết đó. Lâu lắm rối tôi không tự hỏi về Thuyết Tương Đối nữa, có lẽ do chắc mẩm là mình hiểu rồi. Đến bây giờ, sau 12 năm, tự nhiên tình cờ nghĩ về Thuyết Tương Đối, tôi chợt nhận ra là mình chưa hiểu gì hết. Tôi bắt đầu đi tìm hiểu lại Thuyết Tương Đối, đơn giản nhất là từ Google.

Tôi biết có 2 Thuyết Tương Đối theo cách dịch ở Việt Nam: Thuyết Tương Đối hẹp (Special Relativity) và Thuyết Tương Đối Rộng (General Relativity).

Tôi bắt đầu với Special Relatvity

Một cái link từ University Stanford nói về Special relativity rất thú vị.

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Newton's laws of motion give us a complete description of the behavior moving objects at low speeds. The laws are different at speeds reached by the particles at SLAC (Stanford Linear Accelerator Center)

Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity describes the motion of particles moving at close to the speed of light. In fact, it gives the correct laws of motion for any particle. This doesn't mean Newton was wrong, his equations are contained within the relativistic equations. Newton's "laws" provide a very good approximate form, valid when v is much less than c. For particles moving at slow speeds (very much less than the speed of light), the differences between Einstein's laws of motion and those derived by Newton are tiny. That's why relativity doesn't play a large role in everyday life. Einstein's theory supercedes Newton's, but Newton's theory provides a very good approximation for objects moving at everyday speeds.

Einstein's theory is now very well established as the correct description of motion of relativistic objects, that is those traveling at a significant fraction of the speed of light.

Because most of us have little experience with objects moving at speeds near the speed of light, Einstein's predictions may seem strange. However, many years of high energy physics experiments have thoroughly tested Einstein's theory and shown that it fits all results to date.

Theoretical Basis for Special Relativity

Einstein's theory of special relativity results from two statements -- the two basic postulates of special relativity:

1. The speed of light is the same for all observers, no matter what their relative speeds.
2. The laws of physics are the same in any inertial (that is, non-accelerated) frame of reference. This means that the laws of physics observed by a hypothetical observer traveling with a relativistic particle must be the same as those observed by an observer who is stationary in the laboratory.

Given these two statements, Einstein showed how definitions of momentum and energy must be refined and how quantities such as length and time must change from one observer to another in order to get consistent results for physical quantities such as particle half-life. To decide whether his postulates are a correct theory of nature, physicists test whether the predictions of Einstein's theory match observations. Indeed many such tests have been made -- and the answers Einstein gave are right every time!

The Speed of Light is the same for all observers.

The first postulate -- the speed of light will be seen to be the same relative to any observer, independent of the motion of the observer -- is the crucial idea that led Einstein to formulate his theory. It means we can define a quantity c, the speed of light, which is a fundamental constant of nature.

Note that this is quite different from the motion of ordinary, massive objects. If I am driving down the freeway at 50 miles per hour relative to the road, a car traveling in the same direction at 55 mph has a speed of only 5 mph relative to me, while a car coming in the opposite direction at 55 mph approaches me at a rate of 105 mph. Their speed relative to me depends on my motion as well as on theirs.

Physics is the same for all inertial observers.

This second postulate is really a basic though unspoken assumption in all of science -- the idea that we can formulate rules of nature which do not depend on our particular observing situation. This does not mean that things behave in the same way on the earth and in space, e.g. an observer at the surface of the earth is affected by the earth's gravity, but it does mean that the effect of a force on an object is the same independent of what causes the force and also of where the object is or what its speed is.

Einstein developed a theory of motion that could consistently contain both the same speed of light for any observer and the familiar addition of velocities described above for slow-moving objects. This is called the special theory of relativity, since it deals with the relative motions of objects.

Note that Einstein's General Theory of Relativity is a separate theory about a very different topic -- the effects of gravity.

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