Relativity in Curved Spacetime: Life without special relativity
Eric Baird, "Relativity in Curved Spacetime: Life without special relativity"
2007 | ISBN-10: 0955706807, 0955706823 | 394 pages | PDF | 71 MB
2007 | ISBN-10: 0955706807, 0955706823 | 394 pages | PDF | 71 MB
Relativity theory has become one of the icons of Twentieth Century science. It's reckoned to be a difficult subject, taught as a layered series of increasingly difficult mathematics and increasingly abstract concepts. We're told that relativity theory is supposed to be this complicated and counter-intuitive. But how much of this historical complexity is really necessary? Can we bypass the interpretations and paradoxes and pseudoparadoxes of Einstein's special theory and jump directly to a deeper and more intuitive description of reality? What if curvature is a fundamental part of physics, and a final theory of relativity shouldn't reduce to Einstein's "flat" 1905 theory //on principle//? "Relativity…" takes us on a whistlestop tour of Twentieth Century physics - from black holes, quantum mechanics, wormholes and the Big Bang to the workings of the human mind, and asks: what would physics look like without special relativity?