Suppose in a inertial reference frame S, an event A occurs at (ctA,xA,yA,zA) and event B occurs at (ctB,xB,yB,zB).
Now the invariant interval of these two events is,
I=−c2(tA−tB)2+(xA−xB)2+(yA−yB)2+(zA−zB)2=−c2Δt2+Δˉx2,
where I'm using the (−,+,+,+) metric.
Now there can be 3 particular cases of interest corresponding to time-like, space-like and light-like events.
For I=0⟹c2Δt2=Δˉx2, events are light-like.
For I<0⟹c2Δt2>Δˉx2, events are time-like and a reference-frame ˉS exists(accessible by appropriate Lorentz Transformation) for which these two events occur at the same location. The velocity(magnitude and direction) can be computed.
For I>0⟹c2Δt2<Δˉx2, events are space-like and a a reference frame ˉS exists(again accessible by appropriate Lorentz Transformation) for which these two events are simultaneous.
I know how to calculate the velocity(direction and magnitude) of the ˉS frame relative to the S frame in case of a time-like event. I also know how to calculate the magnitude of velocity of the ˉS frame relative to the S frame for a space-like event.
How to find the direction of the ˉS frame relative to S for a space-like event?
No comments:
Post a Comment