Re: Erk's Relativity Book ( www.relativitybook.com )
- From: xxein@xxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2007 19:15:11 -0700
On Sep 28, 12:07 am, Eric Baird wrote:
Hi Guys!
I used to hang out here on s.p.r back in the Nineties (remember
them, back last century?), and also used to have a big relativity
website ("Erk's Relativity Pages", about 300 html pages, got "blanked"
and then finally shut down in, oooh, something like 1997).
Anyhow, the inevitable has finally happened. I've gone and written a
book. Heh.
"Relativity in Curved Spacetime: Life without special relativity"
394 printed pages, large format 234x156mm, over 200 diagrams,
figures and illustrations.
Ten quid in the UK, fifteen dollars in the US
I should have the amazon.com SearchInside! thing up and running at
some point, meanwhile the book cover and a full set of mini page
thumbnail previews and a nice table of contents are at
http://www.relativitybook.com/book_cover.html... etc
for you to dribble over
People who were here in the 1990's or who saw the old website may be
able to make some sort of guesses as to what the book's like, but
hopefully the writing is slightly less turgid than my old newsgroup
posts, and less chaotic and more disciplined than the old website
pages. And it has lots and //lots// of pictures (including a very nice
photo of a frog).
There's twenty-two chapters of Stuff in there, plus a decent
references section. It starts small (light, gravity, E=mc^2,
gravitational time dilation, relativity in general), detours a bit
through Newton's failed attempt at a unified model, Doppler effects,
aberration, does a bit of QM, goes on to "do" dark stars and GR & QM
black holes, gives general relativity a bit of a poke, tries to
generalise a continuous range of hypothetical relativistic theories
and then narrow it down again to one set of equations, and finds that
the single solution that seems to jump out, in the context of a full
gravitomagnetic, QM-compatible relativistic model //isn't// SR. Then
three chapters quickly racing through SR background, behaviour and
experimental testing (although it's definitely not an SR book), then
three fun chapters on cosmology, wormholes and warp drives, before
slowing to a halt with chapters on the limitations of language ( "why
Pi is a stupid number"), social factors, Titanic Syndrome and system
failures ("why computers crash"), and a conclusions section.
As old-time regulars will know, I'm not a fan of special relativity
(which got me listed on the old "crackpot index" here in double-time),
but as you might gather from the book title, that doesn't mean that
I've got anything against the fundamental //principle// of relativity
(hell, the book has relativity in the title //twice// !).
I just think that the special theory makes assumptions that are too
idealised to be workable as a foundation for more advanced physics.
I think SR is probably a bad intermediate solution to an essentially
good idea. Far as I can work out, the stuff that really confuses
newbies about C20th relativity theory isn't so much GR, but the
supposedly-simpler SR stuff.
If that sounds crazy, consider:
We usually say that GR //has// to reduce to SR, as curved surfaces
reduce to flat ones over small regions, but it doesn't follow from
this that GR physics has to reduce to the //physics// of SR: If GR's
spacetime-curvature paradigm is fundamental, and if we take the
Clifford-Wheeler idea of all physics being curvature, then perhaps we
can extend spacetime curvature all the way down to the level of
fundamental particles and QM, and if we do //that//, special
relativity with its assumption of zero curvature ceases to be physics
- it becomes a "null solution" at the limit where meaningful physics
ceases to exist. Real particles with real mass and energy wouldn't be
compelled to obey the laws of special relativity, and in fact, if the
velocity-warped metric that they inhabited in the aforementioned
scheme couldn't logically be a Minkowski metric, then perhaps the
associated equations of motion for those particles //can't// be those
of SR.
Anyhow, it's all discussed (and hopefully explained) in the book.
PS, did I mention the frog?
=Erk= (Eric Baird)
: "At the end of the day, it's all just water under the refrigerator."
xxein: I should have researched your previous postings before I make
a reply, but I want you to know that what you say here makes a logical
sense. I remember your name but not the physic you adhere to. I'll
have to get into that.
It appears to me that you have many 'names' as congratulators that
take a very different stance to physics than I do.
Interesting.
.
- References:
- Erk's Relativity Book ( www.relativitybook.com )
- From: Eric Baird
- Erk's Relativity Book ( www.relativitybook.com )
- Prev by Date: Re: What kind of energy denotes E in Einstein's 1905 Sep 27paper?
- Next by Date: Re: can universe make sense?
- Previous by thread: Re: Erk's Relativity Book ( www.relativitybook.com )
- Next by thread: Black holes and relativity
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
|
