Minkowski’s Space Time

Somnath Datta

Professor (Retd.) Regional College of Mysore

In 1908 Minkowski wrote a paper in which he introduced the concept of a 4-dimensional "world" popularly known as space-time, and introduced "world postulate" suggesting that all physical phenomena should be described only in space-time. He showed how to construct 4-vectors, and classified them into two categories, namely time-like and space-like vectors. He introduced proper time, and using it wrote to define velocity and acceleration, momentum and force, all of them as 4- dimensional vectors. He proposed a 4-dimensional law of motion from which he obtained the famous E=mc^2 formula. In his final analysis Minkowski demonstrated further application of the world postulate by giving a geometrical construction of the Lienard-Weichert potentials and used it to obtain the force exerted by a moving charge on another moving charge. In this article we have provided an exposition of this seminal paper using detailed notes and explanations.