Thursday, December 8, 2011

De Broglie waves and relativity

Another extremely interesting connection between relativity and quantum mechanics is that the quantum De Broglie waves can be understood as an effect of the relativistic desynchronization of clocks given that the clocks rotate with a frequency proportional to the total energy of the particle.   

Imagine a train with a long chain of synchronized clocks from one extreme to the other with the synchronization established according to an observer moving along with the train. Another person standing still on the train station will conclude that the clocks are actually not synchronized (what he would see is a different thing). If the train is moving to the right, the clocks on the right will be ahead respect to the clocks on the left. The De Broglie wave length will be the length that stretches 12 hours of desynchronization.   

[1] W. Baylis, Canadian Journal of Physics, 2007, 85:(12) 1317-1323, 10.1139/p07-121

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

The ball is round!

The first thing we learn in a course of relativity is the relativistic length contraction effect for moving objects relative to an observer. However, what one would actually see is a different thing ! because another important effect must be considered; the time required for the light to arrive from the different points of the observed object to our eyes. The combined effect of the Lorentz contraction along with the time delay was investigated reaching to curious results. For example, a relativistic ball remains with a round appearance!, as discussed by Penrose in the following paper

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1959PCPS...55..137P

A nice visulaization can be found at

http://www.spacetimetravel.org/ueberblick/ueberblick1.html