Berlin 2015 – scientific programme

Parts | Days | Selection | Search | Updates | Downloads | Help

AGPhil: Arbeitsgruppe Philosophie der Physik

AGPhil 9: The role of the metric investigated

AGPhil 9.1: Invited Talk

Friday, March 20, 2015, 09:30–10:15, A 060

On the seemingly double appearance of the signature in general relativity — •Harvey Brown — Oxford University, UK

Both Einstein and Schrödinger explicitly based the existence of a metric field in general relativity on the local validity of special relativity. But the Lorentzian nature of the metric in special relativity can be viewed as an emergent property of the dynamics of matter fields, and in particular the electromagnetic field, as Itin and Hehl carefully demonstrated in 2004. This talk addresses the question as to how this approach to justifying the Lorentzian signature of the space-time metric is supposed to hold in general relativity, if at all.