What happens to the invariant quantities in special relativity?

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1077302

2026-03-21 08:51

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It depends on what these invariant quantities are. It is not enough to specify that something is invariant, you also need to specify under which operation these quantities do not change (= are invariant).

In special relativity there is an operation called a Lorentz transformation which applies the effects of a speed increase, thus applying time dilatation and length contraction. A Lorentz invariant quantity is a quantity which remains the same under this transformation, i.e. it has the same value for every observer in an inertial frame.

Examples of such invariants are the lengths of four-vectors, the generalizations of the common 3-dimensional vectors such as those indicating place and momentum. For example the 3d-vector for location (x,y,z) is joined with another quantity for the time dimension into a 4-vector whose length is Lorentz invariant. There are more Lorentz invariant quantities, some of them quite complex.

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