Bøger udgivet af Minkowski Institute Press

Robert Geroch's lecture notes on general relativity are unique in three main respects. First, the physics of general relativity and the mathematics, which describes it, are masterfully intertwined in such a way that both reinforce each other to facilitate the understanding of the most abstract and subtle issues. Second, the physical phenomena are first properly explained in terms of spacetime and then it is shown how they can be 'decomposed' into familiar quantities, expressed in terms of space and time, which are measured by an observer. Third, Geroch's successful pedagogical approach to teaching theoretical physics through visualization of even the most abstract concepts is fully applied in his lectures on general relativity by the use of around a hundred figures. Although the book contains lecture notes written in 1972, it is (and will remain) an excellent introduction to general relativity, which covers its physical foundations, its mathematical formalism, the classical tests of its predictions, its application to cosmology, a number of specific and important issues (such as the initial value formulation of general relativity, signal propagation, time orientation, causality violation, singularity theorems, conformal transformations, and asymptotic structure of spacetime), and the early approaches to quantization of the gravitational field. Geroch's Differential Geometry: 1972 Lecture Notes can serve as a very helpful companion to this book

Not only the general public, but even students of physics appear to believe that the physics concept of spacetime was introduced by Einstein. This is both unfortunate and unfair. It was Hermann Minkowski (Einstein's mathematics professor) who announced the new four-dimensional (spacetime) view of the world in 1908, which he deduced from experimental physics by decoding the profound message hidden in the failed experiments designed to discover absolute motion. Minkowski realized that the images coming from our senses, which seem to represent an evolving three-dimensional world, are only glimpses of a higher four-dimensional reality that is not divided into past, present, and future since space and all moments of time form an inseparable entity (spacetime). Einstein's initial reaction to Minkowski's view of spacetime and the associated with it four-dimensional physics (also introduced by Minkowski) was not quite favorable: "Since the mathematicians have invaded the relativity theory, I do not understand it myself any more." However, later Einstein adopted not only Minkowski's spacetime physics (which was crucial for Einstein's revolutionary theory of gravity as curvature of spacetime), but also Minkowski's world view as evident from Einstein's letter of condolences to the widow of his longtime friend Besso: "Now Besso has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion." Besso left this world on 15 March 1955; Einstein followed him on 18 April 1955. This volume contains Hermann Minkowski's four works, which laid the foundations of spacetime physics. In some sense it can be regarded as a second expanded edition of the first book published by the Minkowski Institute Press - H. Minkowski, Space and Time: Minkowski's papers on relativity (Minkowski Institute Press, Montreal 2012) - which included Minkowski's three papers published by him. Now, in addition to those papers, this volume also contains Minkowski's fourth paper assembled and published by Minkowski's student Max Born in 1910 "A Derivation of the Fundamental Equations for the Electromagnetic Processes in Moving Bodies from the Standpoint of the Theory of Electrons".