Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Madarász, Judit, Stannett, Mike, Székely, Gergely
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.21180
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Table of Contents:
  • In this paper, we prove a pure mathematical result which has important implications for the history and philosophy of classical physics and the conceptual origins of relativity theory. In formal terms, we show that, up to definitional equivalence, there is no intermediate model of spacetime lying strictly between special relativity and late classical kinematics. Informally, this means that there was essentially no other option but to switch to special relativity to resolve the conflict between late classical kinematics and the null result of the Michelson--Morley experiment.