20 research outputs found
Mach's Principle and the Origin of Inertia
The current status of Mach's principle is discussed within the context of
general relativity. The inertial properties of a particle are determined by its
mass and spin, since these characterize the irreducible unitary representations
of the inhomogeneous Lorentz group. The origin of the inertia of mass and
intrinsic spin are discussed and the inertia of intrinsic spin is studied via
the coupling of intrinsic spin with rotation. The implications of spin-rotation
coupling and the possibility of history dependence and nonlocality in
relativistic physics are briefly mentioned.Comment: 14 pages. Dedicated to Carl Brans in honor of his 80th birthday. To
appear in the Brans Festschrift; v2: typo corrected, published in: At the
Frontier of Spacetime, edited by T. Asselmeyer-Maluga (Springer, 2016),
Chapter 10, pp. 177-18