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# 2.1 Affine properties of Lorentz geometry

### Parallelism and measurement

We think of a frame of reference as a body of measurements or possible measurements to be made by some observer. Ordered geometry lacks measure. The following argument shows that merely by adding a notion of parallelism to our geometry, we automatically gain a system of measurement.

We only expect Lorentz frames to be local, but we do need them to be big enough to cover at least some amount of spacetime. If Betty does an Eötvös experiment by releasing a pencil and a lead ball side by side, she is essentially trying to release them at the same event A, so that she can observe them later and determine whether their world-lines stay right on top of one another at point B. That was all that was required for the Eötvös experiment, but in order to set up a Lorentz frame we need to start dealing with objects that are not right on top of one another. Suppose we release two lead balls in two different locations, at rest relative to one another. This could be the first step toward adding measurement to our geometry, since the balls mark two points in space that are separated by a certain distance, like two marks on a ruler, or the goals at the ends of a soccer field. Although the balls are separated by some finite distance, they are still close enough together so that if there is a gravitational field in the area, it is very nearly the same in both locations, and we expect the distance defined by the gap between them to stay the same. Since they are both subject only to gravitational forces, their world-lines are by definition straight lines (geodesics). The goal here is to end up with some kind of coordinate grid defining a $$(t,x)$$ plane, and on such a grid, the two balls' world-lines are vertical lines. If we release them at events P and Q, then observe them again later at R and S, PQRS should form a rectangle on such a plot. In the figure, the irregularly spaced tick marks along the edges of the rectangle are meant to suggest that although ordered geometry provides us with a well-defined ordering along these lines, we have not yet constructed a complete system of measurement.

The depiction of PQSR as a rectangle, with right angles at its vertices, might lead us to believe that our geometry would have something like the concept of angular measure referred to in Euclid's E4, equality of right angles. But this is too naive even for the Euclidean 3+1 spacetime of Newton and Galileo. Suppose we switch to a frame that is moving relative to the first one, so that the balls are not at rest. In the Euclidean spacetime, time is absolute, so events P and Q would remain simultaneous, and so would R and S; the top and bottom edges PQ and RS would remain horizontal on the plot, but the balls' world-lines PR and QS would become slanted. The result would be a parallelogram. Since observers in different states of motion do not agree on what constitutes a right angle, the concept of angular measure is clearly not going to be useful here. Similarly, if Euclid had observed that a right angle drawn on a piece of paper no longer appeared to be a right angle when the paper was turned around, he would never have decided that angular measure was important enough to be enshrined in E4.

In the context of relativity, where time is not absolute, there is not even any reason to believe that different observers must agree on the simultaneity of PQ and RS. Our observation that time flows differently depending on the observer's state of motion tells us specifically to expect this not to happen when we switch to a frame moving to the relative one. Thus in general we expect that PQRS will be distorted into a form like the one shown in figure c. We do expect, however, that it will remain a parallelogram; a Lorentz frame is one in which the gravitational field, if any, is constant, so the properties of spacetime are uniform, and by symmetry the new frame should still have PR=QS and PQ=RS.

With this motivation, we form the system of affine geometry by adding the following axioms to set O1-O4.The notation [PQRS] means that events P, Q, S, and R form a parallelogram, and is defined as the statement that the lines determined by PQ and RS never meet at a point, and similarly for PR and QS.

• A1 Constructibility of parallelograms: Given any P, Q, and R, there exists S such that [PQRS], and if P, Q, and R are distinct then S is unique.
• A2 Symmetric treatment of the sides of a parallelogram: If [PQRS], then [QRSP], [QPSR], and [PRQS].
• A3 Lines parallel to the same line are parallel to one another: If [ABCD] and [ABEF], then [CDEF].

The following theorem is a stronger version of Playfair's axiom E5, the interpretation being that affine geometry describes a spacetime that is locally flat.

Theorem: Given any line ℓ and any point P not on the line, there exists a unique line through P that is parallel to ℓ.

This is stronger than E5, which only guarantees uniqueness, not existence. Informally, the idea here is that A1 guarantees the existence of the parallel, and A3 makes it unique.

Although these new axioms do nothing more than to introduce the concept of parallelism lacking in ordered geometry, it turns out that they also allow us to build up a concept of measurement. Let ℓ be a line, and suppose we want to define a number system on this line that measures how far apart events are. Depending on the type of line, this could be a measurement of time, of spatial distance, or a mixture of the two. First we arbitrarily single out two distinct points on ℓℓ and label them 0 and 1. Next, pick some auxiliary point q0q0 not lying on ℓ. By A1, construct the parallelogram $$01_(q_0 q_1)$$