History of special relativity History of special relativity The history of special relativity consists of many theoretical results and empirical findings obtained by Albert A. Michelson, Hendrik Lorentz, Henri Poincaré and others. It culminated in the theory of special relativity proposed by Albert Einstein and subsequent work of Max Planck, Hermann Minkowski and others. Although Isaac Newton based his physics on absolute time and space, he also adhered to the principle of relativity of Galileo Galilei restating it precisely for mechanical systems . This can be stated as: as far as the laws of mechanics are concerned, all observers in inertial motion are equally
Criticism of the theory of relativity a rigid body (neither in special nor in general relativity)—so the signal velocity of an object never exceeds the speed of light. Another criticism that was raised by both Lenard and Gustav Mie concerned the existence of "fictitious" gravitational fields in accelerating frames, which according to Einstein's Equivalence Principle are no less physically real than those produced by material sources. Lenard and Mie argued that physical forces can only be produced by real material sources, while the gravitational field that Einstein supposed to exist in an accelerating frame of reference has no concrete physical meaning. Einstein responded that, based on