Things I learnt writing my thesis’ Introduction (Part 1): Einstein’s not so big blunder

As I briefly mentioned in a previous post, the bulk of my Ph.D. thesis consists of a conglomeration of three fairly disconnected publications. In order to lend some semblance of coherence to the thesis as a whole, I had no choice but to write a fairly general Introduction section starting with a quick historical overview

Three sides of a special theory

Today’s post is all about Einstein’s theory of special relativity1. Fair warning: there will be basic mathematics. Usually, I would avoid mathematical detail in this sort of post, but I promise you that all you really need to know in advance is Pythagoras’ theorem and that speed is defined as distance divided by the time