Translating cosmological special relativity into geometric algebra

Abstract

Geometric algebra and Clifford algebra are important tools to describe and analyze the physics of the world we live in. Although there is enormous empirical evidence that we are living in four dimensional spacetime, mathematical worlds of higher dimensions can be used to present the physical laws of our world in an aesthetical and didactical more appealing way. In physics and mathematics education we are therefore confronted with the question how these high dimensional spaces should be taught. But as an immediate confrontation of students with high dimensional compactified spacetimes would expect too much from them at the beginning of their university studies, it seems reasonable to approach the mathematics and physics of higher dimensions step by step. The first step naturally is the step from four dimensional spacetime of special relativity to a five dimensional spacetime world. As a toy model for this artificial world cosmological special relativity, invented by Moshe Carmeli, can be used. This five dimensional non-compactified approach describes a spacetime which consists not only of one time dimension and three space dimensions. In addition velocity is regarded as a fifth dimension. This model very probably will not represent physics correctly. But it can be used to discuss and analyze the consequences of an additional dimension in a clear and simple way. Unfortunately Carmeli has formulated cosmological special relativity in standard vector notation. Therefore a translation of cosmological special relativity into the mathematical language of Grassmann and Clifford (Geometric algebra) is given and the physics of cosmological special relativity is discussed.