Foundations Seminar
INPERSON
BHI Conference Room
Samuel Fletcher

Description
We distinguish several senses in which general relativity has been regarded as “locally special relativistic.” Here, in Part 1, we focus on senses in which a relativistic spacetime has been said to be “locally (approximately) Minkowskian.” After critiquing several proposals in the literature, we present a result capturing a substantive sense in which every relativistic spacetime is locally approximately Minkowskian. We then show that Minkowski spacetime is not distinguished in this result: every relativistic spacetime is locally approximately every other spacetime in the same sense. In Part 2, we will consider “locally specially relativistic” matter theories. (Joint work with James Owen Weatherall.)
When
Monday, September 29, 2025 9:30 AM
Where
Inperson
BHI Conference Room