From Reference Frame Relativity to Relativity of MathematicalModels: Relativity Formulas in a Variety of Non-Archimedean Setups

Abstract

Galilean Relativity and Einstein’s Special and General Relativity showed that the Laws of Physics go deeper than their representations in any given reference frame. Thus covariance or independence of Laws of Physics with respect to changes of reference frames became a fundamental principle. So far, all of that has only been expressed within one single mathematical model, namely, the traditional one built upon the usual continuum of the field R of real numbers, since complex numbers, finite dimensional Euclidean spaces, or infinite dimensional Hilbert spaces, etc., are built upon the real numbers. Here, following [55], we give one example of how one can go beyond that situation and study what stays the same and what changes in the Laws of Physics, when one models them within an infinitely large variety of algebras of scalars constructed rather naturally. Specifically, it is shown that the Special Relativistic addition of velocities can naturally be considered in any of infinitely many reduced power algebras, each of them containing the usual field of real numbers and which, unlike the latter, are non-Archimedean. The nonstandard reals are but one case of such reduced power algebras, and are as well non-Archimedean. Two surprising and strange effects of such a study of the Special Relativistic addition of velocities are that one can easily go beyond the velocity of light, and rather dually, one can as easily end up frozen in immobility, with zero velocity. Both of these situations, together with many other ones, are as naturally available, as the usual one within real numbers.