Direct calculation of length contraction and clock retardation

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that length contraction and clock retardation can be understood as dynamical effects resulting from electromagnetic interactions, challenging the conventional view of these phenomena as purely kinematical in special relativity.

Contribution

It provides an exact dynamical calculation showing that relativistic effects are caused by electromagnetic forces, not just coordinate transformations.

Findings

Length contraction and clock retardation are dynamical phenomena.

Electromagnetic models can reproduce relativistic effects exactly.

Relativistic changes have a causal, physical basis in electromagnetic interactions.

Abstract

For simple electromagnetic models of a rod and a clock, a change of the shape of the rod and of the rate of the clock when they are set in uniform motion is calculated exactly, employing the correct equation of motion of a charged particle in the electromagnetic field and the universal boostability assumption. Thus it is demonstrated that, for the simple system considered, length contraction and clock retardation can be interpreted as dynamical cause-and-effect phenomena, and not as kinematical effects as is usually construed in conventional presentations of Special Relativity. It is argued that the perspectival relativistic change of an object (corresponding to observations from two inertial frames), while certainly an acausal effect, has a dynamical content in the sense that it is {\it tantamount to} an actual dynamical change of the object in one frame.