Chapter 15 - Symmetric Spacetime Intervals

Portent

Objects are point like, waves are distributed. The arrival of an object can be abstracted as a spacetime event, two numbers; when and where. But when a wave arrives, the point-like abstraction is insufficient. Is there an abstraction that would do better?

Primary Docs

Paradigm Discourse:
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Technical Chapter:
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Significance

Our common sense notion of causality no longer appears to be an invariant. Either it is broken, different observers can claim different causes, or some observers view it as going backwards in time. The symmetric spacetime interval offers a potentially testable way to determine what the correct invariant is. Perhaps we can derive a more refined definition of causality.

Research Lineage - SSI

The original paper introducing symmetric spacetime intervals was presented at the 42nd annual Joint Propulsion Conference in 2006.
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