IS PHYSICS ASKING FOR A NEW KINEMATICS?

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

It is discussed whether some of the consistency problems of present day physics could be solved by replacing special relativity, whose underlying kinematics is ruled by the Poincare group, with de Sitter relativity, whose underlying kinematics is ruled by the de Sitter group. In contrast to ordinary special relativity, which seems to fail at the Planck scale, this new relativity is "universal," in the sense that it holds at all energy scales.