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Author: Vesselin Petkov
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Published: 2010-03-11
Total Pages: 326
ISBN-13: 9048134757
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Celebrating the one hundredth anniversary of the 1909 publication of Minkowski’s seminal paper "Space and Time", this volume includes a fresh translation as well as the original in German, and a number of contributed papers on the still-controversial subject.
Author: Vesselin Petkov
Publisher: Springer
Published: 2010-10-24
Total Pages: 326
ISBN-13: 9789048136292
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Celebrating the one hundredth anniversary of the 1909 publication of Minkowski’s seminal paper "Space and Time", this volume includes a fresh translation as well as the original in German, and a number of contributed papers on the still-controversial subject.
Author: Vesselin Petkov
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Published: 2010-09-02
Total Pages: 316
ISBN-13: 3642135382
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Dedicated to the centennial anniversary of Minkowski's discovery of spacetime, this volume contains papers, most presented at the Third International Conference on the Nature and Ontology of Spacetime, that address some of the deepest questions in physics.
Author: David D. Nolte
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2018-07-12
Total Pages: 384
ISBN-13: 0192528505
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Galileo Unbound traces the journey that brought us from Galileo's law of free fall to today's geneticists measuring evolutionary drift, entangled quantum particles moving among many worlds, and our lives as trajectories traversing a health space with thousands of dimensions. Remarkably, common themes persist that predict the evolution of species as readily as the orbits of planets or the collapse of stars into black holes. This book tells the history of spaces of expanding dimension and increasing abstraction and how they continue today to give new insight into the physics of complex systems. Galileo published the first modern law of motion, the Law of Fall, that was ideal and simple, laying the foundation upon which Newton built the first theory of dynamics. Early in the twentieth century, geometry became the cause of motion rather than the result when Einstein envisioned the fabric of space-time warped by mass and energy, forcing light rays to bend past the Sun. Possibly more radical was Feynman's dilemma of quantum particles taking all paths at once — setting the stage for the modern fields of quantum field theory and quantum computing. Yet as concepts of motion have evolved, one thing has remained constant, the need to track ever more complex changes and to capture their essence, to find patterns in the chaos as we try to predict and control our world.
Author: Sander Bais
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 2007
Total Pages: 128
ISBN-13: 9780674026117
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity, first published in 1905, radically changed our understanding of the world. Familiar notions of space and time and energy were turned on their head, and our struggle with Einstein's counterintuitive explanation of these concepts was under way. The task is no easier today than it was a hundred years ago, but in this book Sander Bais has found an original and uniquely effective way to convey the fundamental ideas of Einstein's Special Theory. Bais's previous book, The Equations, was widely read and roundly praised for its clear and commonsense explanation of the math in physics. Very Special Relativity brings the same accessible approach to Einstein's theory. Using a series of easy-to-follow diagrams and employing only elementary high school geometry, Bais conducts readers through the quirks and quandaries of such fundamental concepts as simultaneity, causality, and time dilation. The diagrams also illustrate the difference between the Newtonian view, in which time was universal, and the Einsteinian, in which the speed of light is universal. Following Bais's straightforward sequence of simple, commonsense arguments, readers can tinker with the theory and its great paradoxes and, finally, arrive at a truly deep understanding of Einstein's interpretation of space and time. An intellectual journey into the heart of the Special Theory, the book offers an intimate look at the terms and ideas that define our reality.
Author: Govert Schilling
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 2017-07-31
Total Pages: 353
ISBN-13: 0674971663
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →A spacetime appetizer -- Relatively speaking -- Einstein on trial -- Wave talk and bar fights -- The lives of stars -- Clockwork precision -- Laser quest -- The path to perfection -- Creation stories -- Cold case -- Gotcha -- Black magic -- Nanoscience -- Follow-up questions -- Space invaders -- Surf's up for Einstein wave astronomy
Author: Francesco Catoni
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Published: 2011-05-07
Total Pages: 119
ISBN-13: 3642179770
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This book provides an original introduction to the geometry of Minkowski space-time. A hundred years after the space-time formulation of special relativity by Hermann Minkowski, it is shown that the kinematical consequences of special relativity are merely a manifestation of space-time geometry. The book is written with the intention of providing students (and teachers) of the first years of University courses with a tool which is easy to be applied and allows the solution of any problem of relativistic kinematics at the same time. The book treats in a rigorous way, but using a non-sophisticated mathematics, the Kinematics of Special Relativity. As an example, the famous "Twin Paradox" is completely solved for all kinds of motions. The novelty of the presentation in this book consists in the extensive use of hyperbolic numbers, the simplest extension of complex numbers, for a complete formalization of the kinematics in the Minkowski space-time. Moreover, from this formalization the understanding of gravity comes as a manifestation of curvature of space-time, suggesting new research fields.
Author: Claus Beisbart
Publisher: Springer Nature
Published: 2020-09-25
Total Pages: 277
ISBN-13: 3030477827
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This volume offers an integrated understanding of how the theory of general relativity gained momentum after Einstein had formulated it in 1915. Chapters focus on the early reception of the theory in physics and philosophy and on the systematic questions that emerged shortly after Einstein's momentous discovery. They are written by physicists, historians of science, and philosophers, and were originally presented at the conference titled Thinking About Space and Time: 100 Years of Applying and Interpreting General Relativity, held at the University of Bern from September 12-14, 2017. By establishing the historical context first, and then moving into more philosophical chapters, this volume will provide readers with a more complete understanding of early applications of general relativity (e.g., to cosmology) and of related philosophical issues. Because the chapters are often cross-disciplinary, they cover a wide variety of topics related to the general theory of relativity. These include: Heuristics used in the discovery of general relativity Mach's Principle The structure of Einstein's theory Cosmology and the Einstein world Stability of cosmological models The metaphysical nature of spacetime The relationship between spacetime and dynamics The Geodesic Principle Symmetries Thinking About Space and Time will be a valuable resource for historians of science and philosophers who seek a deeper knowledge of the (early and later) uses of general relativity, as well as for physicists and mathematicians interested in exploring the wider historical and philosophical context of Einstein's theory.
Author: Abhay Ashtekar
Publisher: Springer
Published: 2014-09-01
Total Pages: 883
ISBN-13: 3642419925
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The Springer Handbook of Spacetime is dedicated to the ground-breaking paradigm shifts embodied in the two relativity theories, and describes in detail the profound reshaping of physical sciences they ushered in. It includes in a single volume chapters on foundations, on the underlying mathematics, on physical and astrophysical implications, experimental evidence and cosmological predictions, as well as chapters on efforts to unify general relativity and quantum physics. The Handbook can be used as a desk reference by researchers in a wide variety of fields, not only by specialists in relativity but also by researchers in related areas that either grew out of, or are deeply influenced by, the two relativity theories: cosmology, astronomy and astrophysics, high energy physics, quantum field theory, mathematics, and philosophy of science. It should also serve as a valuable resource for graduate students and young researchers entering these areas, and for instructors who teach courses on these subjects. The Handbook is divided into six parts. Part A: Introduction to Spacetime Structure. Part B: Foundational Issues. Part C: Spacetime Structure and Mathematics. Part D: Confronting Relativity theories with observations. Part E: General relativity and the universe. Part F: Spacetime beyond Einstein.
Author: Jaume Navarro
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2018-08-30
Total Pages: 272
ISBN-13: 0192517791
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Ether and Modernity offers a snapshot of the status of an epistemic object, the "ether" (or "aether"), in the early twentieth century. The contributed papers show that the ether was often regarded as one of the objects of modernity, hand in hand with the electron, radioactivity or X-rays, and not simply as the stubborn residue of an old-fashioned, long-discarded science. The prestige and authority of scientists and popularisers like Oliver Lodge and Arthur Eddington in Britain, Phillip Lenard in Germany or Dayton C. Miller in the USA was instrumental in the preservation, defence or even re-emergence of the ether in the 1920s. Moreover, the consolidation of wireless communications and radio broadcasting, indeed a very modern technology, brought the ether into audiences that would otherwise never have heard about such an esoteric entity. The ether also played a pivotal role among some artists in the early twentieth century: the values of modernism found in the complexities and contradictions of modern physics, such as wireless action or wave-particle puzzles, a fertile ground for the development of new artistic languages; in literature as much as in the pictorial and performing arts. Essays on the intellectual foundations of Umberto Boccioni's art, the linguistic techniques of Lodge, and Ernst Mach's considerations on aesthetics and physics witness to the imbricate relationship between the ether and modernism. Last but not least, the ether played a fundamental part in the resurgence of modern spiritualism in the aftermath of the Great War. This book examines the complex array of meanings, strategies and milieus that enabled the ether to remain an active part in scientific and cultural debates well into the 1930s, but not beyond. This portrait may be easily regarded as the swan song of an epistemic object that was soon to fade away as shown by Paul Dirac's unsuccessful attempt to resuscitate some kind of aether in 1951, with which this book finishes.
