I think Special Relativity relies on Lorentz covariance,in fact I believe the two are pretty much the same thing. Having said that, the general case is often difficult and not particularly useful. I couldn't honestly tell you if the Dirac equation has any real world applications outside of particle accelerators. It's just, kind of... nice.
(
Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag,
Tue 8 Dec 2009, 21:58,
archived)
yeahlorentz invariance underpins special relativity -- and general, since special relativity is recovered from general in the flat limit. there'll certainly be real-world applications of it; it's the equation governing the behaviour of relativistic electrons, and if it doesn't have some application somewhere in semiconductor physics that has a bearing on modern computers i'd be quite surprised...
(
boris the spider,
Tue 8 Dec 2009, 22:05,
archived)
who knows what's going to happenwhen they move on to the 32nm process. Even still, electron drift velocities may be very low even though the signal speed approaches the speed of light.
( Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag,
Tue 8 Dec 2009, 22:11,
archived)
very trueeven so, i'd be surprised if they didn't have to take relativity into account at some point. though i should maybe prepare to be surprised.
( boris the spider,
Tue 8 Dec 2009, 22:17,
archived)