Comment on arXiv:1007.0718 by Lee Smolin

TL;DR

This paper critiques a proposed interpretation of deformed special relativity, arguing it cannot evade experimental bounds and effectively reduces to ordinary special relativity, challenging its validity.

Contribution

It provides a critical analysis showing that the new interpretation cannot bypass existing experimental constraints, reaffirming the robustness of standard special relativity.

Findings

Nonlocal effects are coordinate artifacts with no physical consequences.

The proposed interpretation reduces to ordinary special relativity.

It cannot circumvent existing experimental bounds.

Abstract

In a recent paper it was suggested a novel interpretation of deformed special relativity. In that new approach, nonlocal effects that had previously been shown to occur and be incompatible with experiment to high precision, are interpreted as coordinate artifacts that do not lead to real physical consequences. It is argued here that if one follows through the consequences of this thought, one finds that the theory one is dealing with needs to be ordinary special relativity to precision even better than the bound on nonlocal effect already requires. Consequently, the new approach cannot be understood as a version of deformed special relativity that circumvents the bound.