Special relativity
Teoría de la relatividad especial
- Date
- 1905 · confidence high
- Place
- Patent Office, Bern, Switzerland
- Credited to
- Albert Einstein; Hendrik Lorentz; Henri Poincaré
- People
- 👤 Albert Einstein1879–1955👤 Hendrik Antoon Lorentz1853–1928👤 Henri Poincaré1854–1912
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What was discovered
The laws of physics are the same in all inertial frames and the speed of light is constant for all observers; from this follow time dilation, length contraction and the relativity of simultaneity. It replaces Newton's absolute space and time.
Lorentz and Poincaré had the mathematical formalism; Einstein provided the physical interpretation without the aether. There is a historiographical debate about Mileva Marić's contribution, without solid documentary evidence.
What it led to
- E = mc²
- General relativity
- Minkowski's space-time (1908)
- Particle physics and accelerators
- Relativistic correction of GPS
Built on
- Galilean relativity1632
- Michelson-Morley experiment1887
- Lorentz transformation1904
- Maxwell's electrodynamics
- Lorentz transformations (1904)
- Galilean relativity
Made possible
- Mass-energy equivalence (E = mc²)1905
- Minkowski spacetime1908
- General relativity1915
- Compton effect1923
- Dirac equation and the prediction of antimatter1928
- Chandrasekhar limit1930
- Cherenkov radiation1934
- Global Positioning System (GPS)1978-1995
- Particle accelerators
- GPS (relativistic corrections)
- Nuclear reactors and weapons (via E = mc²)