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ajrosstoday at 12:56 AM3 repliesview on HN

Actually, it is momentum, sorta. Galilean 3D momentum isn't conserved under special relativity. The energy-momentum four-vector, however, is, under all lorentz-transformed frames.

So in some sense energy is momentum in the time direction (though it's not a Euclidean 4D space, so beware of assumptions). For an object at rest, this becomes its E=mc² equivalence. Kinetic energy is just a straightforward "rotation" of the frame.


Replies

esalmantoday at 3:57 AM

Original comment is correct, it's not momentum. Work (hence, energy) is integral of force over distance, momentum is integral over time. There's not "sorta" about high school physics.

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c1ccccc1today at 3:04 AM

If you use the right formula for calculating it (which approximates p=mv at low speeds), momentum is actually conserved in special relativity, and so is energy.

However: Energy and momentum are not invariant under changes of reference frame, though the magnitude of the energy-momentum 4-vector is invariant between frames.

firebottoday at 12:59 AM

P=mv (momentum equals mass times velocity)

This is linear.

One small nuance... saying "kinetic energy is just a straightforward rotation of the frame" is close, but it's the total energy that is the time component of the four-momentum and mixes with the spatial momentum under Lorentz transformations. Kinetic energy is the difference between that transformed total energy and the invariant rest energy. So kinetic energy isn't itself a four-vector component, but it arises from how the time component changes when viewed from a different inertial frame.

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