A no-go theorem about rotation in relativity theory

Abstract

Within the framework of general relativity, in some cases at least, it is a delicate and interesting question just what it means to say that an extended body is or is not "rotating". It is so for two reasons. First, one can easily think of different criteria of rotation. Though they agree if the background spacetime structure is sufficiently simple, they do not do so in general. Second, none of the criteria fully answers to our classical intuitions. Each one exhibits some feature or other that violates those intuitions in a significant and interesting way. The principal goal of the paper is to make the second claim precise in the form of a modest no-go theorem.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,221

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

  • Only published works are available at libraries.

Similar books and articles

Analytics

Added to PP
2009-01-28

Downloads
32 (#429,411)

6 months
1 (#1,027,696)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Citations of this work

Time travel and time machines.Chris Smeenk & Christian Wuthrich - 2011 - In Craig Callender (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Time. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 577-630.
The rotating discs argument defeated.Jeremy Butterfield - 2006 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 57 (1):1-45.
Dust, Time and Symmetry.Gordon Belot - 2005 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 56 (2):255-291.

View all 7 citations / Add more citations

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references