Re: Is charge conserved between frames?

From: Pmb (pmb_phy_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 11/01/04 

Date: 1 Nov 2004 10:08:31 -0800

Tom Roberts <tjroberts@lucent.com> wrote in message news:<DF6hd.18295$5b1.7861@newssvr17.news.prodigy.com>...
> sal wrote:
> > All we've managed to do is split
> > the Faraday 2-form into an electric 4-vector and a magnetic 2-form which
> > are, if anything, harder to apply and more confusing than the original
> > object.
>
> No, you have done nothing of the sort. The {E_a} you've been discussing
> are NOT "the electric field", they are, as I said before, "the
> components of the electric field measured by the observer with
> 4-velocity U, expressed as the components of a 4-vector".
>
> Note the 4-vector corresponding to the {E_a} is NOT a field -- it is NOT
> a function on the manifold (as is F(.,.) -- F(.,.) is the only field in
> this discussion[#]), but rather the {E_a} are a function of both
> location along U's worldline and of U. The {E_a} are not even defined
> off of U's worldline, so how could they possibly be interpreted as any
> sort of "electric field"????

Oy vey! That is totally incorrect. You are once again confusing, U_obs
= 4-velocity of an observer with U_person = 4-velocity of a person. A
person is localized whereas a Lorentz observed in flat spacetime is
not.