内容简介

The purposes of this book are (1) to explore and expound relativity physics and four-dimensional symmetry from the logically simplest viewpoint by making one single postulate instead of two; and (2) to indicate the simplest generalization of the Lorentz transformation in order to cope with frames with constant linear accelerations. The fundamentally new ideas of the first purpose are developed on the basis of the term paper of a Harvard physics undergraduate. They lead to an unexpected affirmative answer to the long-standing question of whether it is possible to construct a relativity theory without postulating the constancy of the speed of light and retaining only the first postulate of special relativity. This question was discussed in the early years following the discovery of special relativity by many physicists, including Ritz, Tolman, Kunz, Comstock and Pauli, all of whom obtained negative answers. Furthermore, the new theory of relativity indicates the truly universal and fundamental constants in physics, and provides a broad view of relativistic physics beyond special relativity. It substantiates the view and sheds light on the understanding that the four-dimensional symmetry framework can accommodate many different concepts of physical time, including common time and Reichenbach's general concept of time. This logically simplest viewpoint of relativity allows a natural extension of the physics of particles and fields from inertial frames to noninertial frames in which the speed of light is not constant. New predictions in physics resulting from this new viewpoint are discussed. The book is based on papers by the author and his collaborators in Physics Letters A, Nuovo Cimento B, and Physical Review A and D.

作者简介
About the Author： Jong-Ping Hsu received his B.S.in physics from the National Taiwan University and his M.S.in physics from the National Tsing Hua University.In 1965,he traveled to the University of Rochester to study partical physics and eamed his Ph.D.degree in 1969 under Professor S.Okubo.Hsu has worked at McGill University,Rutgers,the State University of New Jerssy,the University of Texas at Austin,the Marshall Space Flight Center,NASA,and is currently at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.He has also been a visiting scientist at Brown University,MIT,Taiwan University,Beijing Normal University and Academy of Science,China,Hsu's research has been concentrated in the areas of gauge field thecries,the unified electroweak theory,fuzzy quantum mechanics and fields,and broad views of 4-dimensional symmetry,He has published more than 100 papers and edited two conference proceedings.Hsu is currently a physics professor and the Director of Jing Shin Research Fund at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.