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It should be stated somewhere here that relativity operates in Minkowski space and not Euclidian 4D space.

What this means is that the length of a relativistic four-vector [ct, x, y, z] is sqrt((ct)^2 - (x^2 + y^2 + z^2)).

It is not the same as the Euclidian magnitude, i.e. NOT sqrt((ct)^2 + x^2 + y^2 + z^2)

The article does mention this, although with slightly confusing wording, but it should be emphasized that Lorentz invariant quantities need to be computed with the Minkowski metric.



Just an aside: exploring the implications of relativity in a Euclidean space is the basis of Greg Egan's "Orthogonal" book series.


The early versions of Minkowski space used imaginary numbers which you prefer is mostly just notation.


It’s possible to formulate SR/GR in Euclidean geometry as well:

https://www.euclideanrelativity.com/




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