Related papers: Einstein and Hilbert: The Creation of General Rela…
We discuss some fundamental issues underlying gravitational physics and point out some of the main shortcomings of Einstein's General Relativity. In particular, after taking into account the role of the two main objects of relativistic…
The confrontation between Einstein's gravitation theory and experimental results, notably binary pulsar data, is summarized and its significance discussed. Experiment and theory agree at the 10^{-3} level. All the basic structures of…
Newton's deduction of the inverse square law from Kepler's ellipse and area laws together with his "superb theorem" on the gravitation attraction of spherically symmetric bodies, are the major steps leading to the discovery of the law of…
Einstein's theory of general relativity models the physical universe using spacetimes which satisfy Einstein's gravitational field equations. To date, Einstein's theory has been enormously successful in modeling observed gravitational…
This year marks the 100th anniversary of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity (1915-2015). The first nontrivial solution of the Einstein field equations was derived by Karl Schwarzschild in 1916. This Note will focus mainly on the…
This document gathers the notes of a 30-hour review course on gravitation, which I delivered in January 2018 and January 2019 at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences of Cameroon (AIMS-Cameroon). Its main goal is to propose a big…
The laws of gravitation devised by Newton, and by Hilbert and Einstein, have failed many experimental and observational tests, namely the bore hole g anomaly, flat rotation curves for spiral galaxies, supermassive black hole mass spectrum,…
This is a brief introduction to general relativity, designed for both students and teachers of the subject. While there are many excellent expositions of general relativity, few adequately explain the geometrical meaning of the basic…
Our conventional understanding of space-time, as well as our notion of geometry, break down once we attempt to describe the very early stages of the evolution of our universe. The extreme physical conditions near the Big Bang necessitate an…
The main purpose of the present paper is to show that a correction of one mistake was crucial for Einstein's pathway to the first version of the 1915 general theory of relativity, but also might have played a role in obtaining the final…
Gravitation, according to General Relativity, is an attribute of space-time's geometry and hence not a force in the Newtonian sense. This is a consequence of Einstein's equivalence principle, which so far passed all experimental tests with…
The book presents ideas by H. Poincare and H. Minkowski according to those the essence and the main content of the relativity theory are the following: the space and time form a unique four-dimensional continuum supplied by the…
To commemorate the 100th anniversary of general relativity, the International Society on General Relativity and Gravitation (ISGRG) commissioned a Centennial Volume, edited by the authors of this article. We jointly wrote introductions to…
Three of the four forces of Nature are described by quantum Yang-Mills theories with remarkable precision. The fourth force, gravity, is described classically by the Einstein-Hilbert theory. There appears to be an inherent incompatibility…
This is Chapter 1 in the book General Relativity and Gravitation: A Centennial Perspective, Edited by Abhay Ashtekar (Editor in Chief), Beverly Berger, James Isenberg, Malcolm MacCallum. Publisher: Cambridge University Press (June, 2015).…
It is universally believed that with his 1905 paper "Does the inertia of a body depend on its energy content?" Einstein first demonstrated the equivalence of mass and energy by making use of his special theory of relativity. In the final…
Since antiquity, from Euclid of Alexandria to Galileo Galilei to Immanuel Kant to Hermann Minkowksi to Albert Einstein, the question of the nature of space and time has occupied scientists and philosophers. In the four-dimensional…
An odd look at "standard" physics (Galileo, Newton, Einstein, Dirac) leading to a radical change of our concept of inertial motion and to new heuristic approaches of gravitation and the cosmological constant.
Attempts to merge Einsteinian gravity with Newtonian run into inconsistencies because in Newton's gravity time is absolute and the speed of gravity is infinite. Such an assumption was in a focus of attention of scientists in 19th century…
This paper will attempt to show that the Doppler principle was of major relevance to Einstein for the genesis of the special theory of relativity.