Note on the Relativistic Thermodynamics of Moving Bodies

Abstract: We employ a novel thermodynamical argument to show that, at the macroscopic level,there is no intrinsic law of temperature transformation under Lorentz boosts. This result extends the corresponding microstatistical one of earlier works to the purely macroscopic regime and signifies that the concept of temperature as an objective entity is restricted to the description of bodies in their rest frames. The argument on which this result is based is centred on the thermal transactions between a body that moves with uniform velocity relative to a certain inertial frame and a thermometer, designed to measure its temperature, that is held at rest in that frame.