Abstract
Special relativity, proposed by Einstein at the beginning of the twentieth century, has become one of the pillars of physics. However, one of the lessons we have learned from it is that physical theories generally have their domain of validity: a highly successful theory describing certain phenomena may simply stop working if extrapolated to a new regime. Therefore, relativity theory may also have its validity domain, and it is fundamental to test its principles in regimes that have not yet been investigated. An example is the so-called Planck scale, where the current understanding of quantum mechanics and gravitation is incomplete, and precisely because of that, we expect the emergence of new physics. We will discuss how the search for violations of Lorentz symmetry, the fundamental principle of the theory of special relativity, presents itself as a window to the investigation of physics in the Planck scale. Much of this work can be read as a text of science popularization, but at the end we present an analysis of the electrodynamics with Lorentz violations, intended for readers with a knowledge of physics at undergraduate level.
Keywords:
Lorentz violations; Relativity Theory; Quantum Gravity; Electromagnetism
