2021-06-02

orthogonalization in SR, continued

Soledad Villar (JHU) and I discussed more the problem of orthogonalization of vectors—or finding orthonormal basis vectors that span a subspace—in special (and general) relativity. She proposed a set of hacks that correct the generalization of Gram–Schmidt orthogonalization that I proposed a week or so ago. It's complicated, because although the straightforward generalization of GS works with probability one, there are cases you can construct that bork completely. The problem is that the method involves division by an inner product, and if the vector becomes light-like, that inner product vanishes.

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