Friday, October 14, 2022

Hermann Minkowski Space (Spacetime)

I'm neither a physicist nor a mathematician, but I'm fascinated with Minkowski spacetime. I want to understand it better, so feel free to contribute anything that might be helpful or pertinent to this subject. For me, it's interesting to look at Minkowski spacetime from a theological perspective, but I need a better understanding of what it is.

I have accumulated a number of works that explain Minkowski spacetime, and one reason I'm fascinated it, is because of how Einstein used the idea to develop relativity theory. Sir Roger Penrose makes these remarks:

"Minkowski’s 4-space incorporated the standard three dimensions of space with a fourth dimension to describe the passage of time. Accordingly, the points of this 4-space are frequently referred to as events, since any such point has a temporal as well as a spatial specification. There is not really anything very revolutionary about this, just in itself. But the key point of Minkowski’s idea—which was revolutionary—is that the geometry of his 4-space does not separate out naturally into a time dimension and (more significantly) a family of ordinary Euclidean 3-spaces, one for each given time. Instead, Minkowski’s space-time has a different kind of geometric structure, giving a curious twist to Euclid’s ancient idea of geometry. It provides an overall geometry to space-time, making it one indivisible whole, which completely encodes the structure of Einstein’s special relativity."

Penrose, Roger. Cycles of Time (p. 80-81). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.






2 comments:

Duncan said...

Just a little background:-

https://galileo-unbound.blog/2021/04/24/hermann-minkowskis-spacetime-the-theory-that-einstein-overlooked/

Edgar Foster said...

Thanks, that's some good info on Minkowski and Einstein.