Related papers: The Einstein-Varicak Correspondence on Relativisti…
We review the recent results on development of vector models of spin and apply them to study the influence of spin-field interaction on the trajectory and precession of a spinning particle in external gravitational and electromagnetic…
Between 1935 and 1936, Einstein was occupied with the Schwarzschild solution and the singularity within it while working in Princeton on the unified field theory and with his assistant Nathan Rosen, on the theory of the Einstein-Rosen…
K. G\"odel [G1] discovered his celebrated solution to Einstein equations in 1949. Additional contributions were made by Kundt [K] and Hawking-Ellis ([H-E],5.7). On the other hand, a general Lorentz invariant operator, associated to the…
The teaching of special relativity still follows Einstein's original two-postulate approach and thus recreates the relativistic revolution in the minds of students again and again, with all its attendant shocking and mysterious aspects. As…
About 50 years ago, in 1958, Dirac published his formulation of generalized Hamiltonian dynamics for gravitation. Several years later Arnowitt, Deser and Misner (ADM) proposed their description of the dynamics of General Relativity which…
Two Hamiltonian formulations of General Relativity, due to Pirani, Schild and Skinner (Phys. Rev. 87, 452, 1952) and Dirac (Proc. Roy. Soc. A 246, 333, 1958), are considered. Both formulations, despite having different expressions for…
Einstein based his special theory of relativity on two postulates: (a) physical laws appear the same in all inertial frames, and (b) the speed of light in vacuum is an observer-independent constant. However, it is already known that the…
Writers read Einstein's letter to Mari\'c from 1901 in which he wrote: "bringing our work on relative motion to a successful conclusion!" What came afterwards was boosted by a claim that Joffe had seen the original relativity paper…
On the basis of his `Z\"urich Notebook' I shall describe a particularly fruitful phase in Einstein's struggle on the way to general relativity. These research notes are an extremely illuminating source for understanding Einstein's main…
The historical and conceptual foundations of General Relativity are revisited, putting the main focus on the physical meaning of the invariant ds, the Equivalence Principle, and the precise interpretation of spacetime geometry. It is argued…
We show that in the Einstein-Cartan gravity it is possible to obtain a relation between Hubble's expansion and the global rotation (vorticity) of the Universe. Gravitational coupling can be reduced to dimensionless quantity of order unity,…
The answer to the question, what physical meaning should be attributed to the so-called boost-rotation symmetric exact solutions to the field equations of general relativity, is provided within the general interpretation scheme for the…
Einstein's early calculations of gravitational lensing, contained in a scratch notebook and dated to the spring of 1912, are reexamined. A hitherto unknown letter by Einstein suggests that he entertained the idea of explaining the…
A simple, though rarely considered, thought experiment on relativistic rotation is described in which internal inconsistencies in the theory of relativity seem to arise. These apparent inconsistencies are resolved by appropriate insight…
The "rigid bodies" must be in Relativity the "deformable bodies" where the longitudinal waves propagate with the maximun speed $c$. In 1909, Born studied the "relativistic underformable body" but made the mistake of calling it "rigid". The…
The vorticity of world lines of observers associated to the rotation of a massive body was reported by Lense and Thirring more than a century ago. In their example the frame dragging effect induced by the vorticity, is directly (explicitly)…
The content of Einstein's theory of gravitation is encoded in the properties of the solutions to his field equations. There has been obtained a wealth of information about these solutions in the ninety years the theory has been around. It…
This is a substantially expanded version of a chapter-contribution to "The Springer Handbook of Spacetime", edited by Abhay Ashtekar and Vesselin Petkov, published by Springer Verlag in 2014. This contribution introduces the reader to the…
Theories of fundamental physics as well as cosmology must ultimately not only account for the structure and evolution of the universe and the physics of fundamental interactions, but also lead to an understanding of why this particular…
In this contribution I discuss a peak in Einstein's endeavor to extract as much information as possible about the nature of radiation from the Planck distribution is his paper "On the Quantum Theory of Radiation" of 1916. This is one of the…