Abstract
The electromagnetic fields and charge and current densities constitute a relativistic physical system. Changes in the charge distribution cause changes of the fields with the speed of light. Though the effects are retarded, they nevertheless approximately obey actio et reactio because the electric field of a charge in straight uniform motion points to its instantaneous, not its retarded position. Only acceleration leads to a loss of energy and momentum by radiation. The electrodynamic interactions are invariant under dilations, which is why they cannot explain the particular values of particle masses or the particular sizes of atoms.
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Notes
- 1.
Unfortunately, “energy” and “electric field” begin with the same letter. We denote the absolute value of the electric field and the energy by \(E\) and let the context resolve the ambiguity.
- 2.
This gauge condition is due to Ludvig Valentin Lorenz, not Hendrik Antoon Lorentz [16, 20].
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Dragon, N. (2012). Electrodynamics. In: The Geometry of Special Relativity - a Concise Course. SpringerBriefs in Physics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-28329-1_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-28329-1_5
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