| Home | Articles | Guide to Observing | Tour of the Constellations | Book Reviews |
|
A Journey Into Gravity And Spacetime
by John Archibald Wheeler 258 pages Level: Popular Mostly non-mathematical look into the ideas behind Relativity |
|
John Archibald Wheeler knows his stuff. He not only co-wrote one of the most
influential texts on Relativity Theory "Gravitation" but seems to have been
on speaking terms with almost every great physicist and mathematician of the
twentieth century. In the acknowledgements section of "A Journey Into Gravity
And Spacetime", Wheeler thanks, among others, Albert Einstein, Kurt Godel, John von Neumann,
Andrei Sakharov, Steven Weinberg and Steven Hawking.
"A Journey Into Gravity And Spacetime" is part of the Scientific American Library series. It is sumptuously illustrated with color diagrams and photographs. An author trying to explain general relativity to the public faces two problems. The first is that of concepts. For instance, what is space-time and how can it be curved? Wheeler succeeds in explaining such concepts through clearly written text and judicious use of "thought experiments" and illustrations. The second problem is that the mathematics of general relativity is not simple. The mathematics of special relativity is simpler because its based on a geometry that is flat - not Euclidean but still flat. Calculations are relatively straightforward. The mathematics of curved geometry is well beyond what can be really explained in a popular text. Wheeler like many authors before and after him, must resort to analogies. He devotes a chapter to the field equations that shows the relationship between space-time and matter. Here he is less successful. Even if the reader does understand the analogy, he or she will be no closer to understanding what General Relativity is about. Nevertheless, "A Journey Into Gravity And Spacetime" is a good guide for the reader without either a strong mathematical or science background who wants to understand the concepts involved in Einstein's theory of general relativity. |
|
| Review by Ed Ehrlich | |
| Table Of Contents | |
|
Preface 1 Great Men, Great Ideas 2 From Fall to Float 3 Interval: Revelation That All of Space is Ours 4 Boomeranging Through the Earth 5 Tides: The Grip of Mass on Spacetime 6 Momenergy: The Grip Of spacetime on Mass 7 The boundary of a Boundary: Where the Action Is 8 From Potter's Wheel to Space Geometry 9 Picturing Space and Spacetime Around a Center of Mass 10 Stones in Flight and Planets in Orbit 11 Gravity Waves 12 Black Holes 13 A Farewell Look at Gravity Acknowledgments Sources of Illustrations Index |
|