Minkowkski Spacetime

Minkowski was the first to reformulate the Lorentz Transformation as a rotation in the spacetime co-ordinate system (x1, x2, x3, x4), where x1 = x, x2 = y, x3 = z, x4 = ict (with c = speed of light, i2 = -1).

A detailed description of this reformulation is available in pdf-format: minkowski.pdf. It is readable using the freely available Acrobat Reader from Adobe. It was created using MikTeX. The figures in this document are repeated below.


Figure 1: Rotated co-ordinate system


Figure 2: Moving co-ordinate systems