Friday, May 17, 2019

special relativity - How to find the direction of velocity of a reference frame where two events are simultaneous in case of a space-like interval


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(tAtB)2+(xAxB)2+(yAyB)2+(zAzB)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=0c2Δt2=Δˉx2, events are light-like.


For I<0c2Δt2>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>0c2Δt2<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?






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