Very Special Relativity
Equivalent to the original ? No
Ignoring gravity, experimental bounds seem to suggest that special relativity with its Lorentz symmetry and Poincare symmetry describes spacetime. Surprisingly, Cohen and Glashow have demonstrated that a small subgroup of the Lorentz group is sufficient to explain all the current bounds.
The minimal subgroup in question can be described as follows: The stabilizer of a null vector is the special Euclidean group SE(2), which contains T(2) as the subgroup of parabolic transformations. This T(2), when extended to include either parity or time reversal (i.e. subgroups of the orthochronous and time-reversal respectively), is sufficient to give us all the standard predictions. Their new symmetry is called Very Special Relativity (VSR).
Read more about this topic: Special Relativity (alternative Formulations)
Famous quotes containing the words special and/or relativity:
“Weve got to figure these things a little bit different than most people. Yknow, theres something about going out in a plane that beats any other way.... A guy that washes out at the controls of his own ship, well, he goes down doing the thing that he loved the best. It seems to me that thats a very special way to die.”
—Dalton Trumbo (19051976)
“By an application of the theory of relativity to the taste of readers, to-day in Germany I am called a German man of science, and in England I am represented as a Swiss Jew. If I come to be regarded as a bĂȘte noire the descriptions will be reversed, and I shall become a Swiss Jew for the Germans and a German man of science for the English!”
—Albert Einstein (18791955)