LECTURE 26
goals and outline
Curved Spacetime: Physics is Math
This is my field of physics.
lecture title
text pages
Ch 12, pp 144-148.
lecture goals
- See that mass is the ultimate cause of the curvature of spacetime.
- Understand how the sun causes the path of starlight to bend, which was the triumphant prediction of the theory of General Relativity, and actually observed during a solar eclipse in 1919.
- Learn about gravitational lensing, an exciting and very current observation in astrophysics.
- Learn Einstein's tensor equation relating curvature to energy density.
- See that there is a general relativistic clock slowdown, too, near a mass, so that clocks stop in a black hole.
outline of lecture
1. Mass Causes Curvature
2. Solar Eclipse Observation
3. Gravitational Lenses and Waves
4. Einstein's Equation T~R
5. Two Solutions to Einstein's Equation
6. Another Clock Slowdown
quotes
The gravitational force is the oldest force known to man and the least
understood.
-- Peter van Nieuwenhuisen, 1981
The thing about gravity is that it's boring, because you understand it
completely. If it didn't have Einstein's name on it, would you give a damn?
(Quoted in an article on a proposed $192 million experiment to detect gravity waves, predicted by Einstein's theory but not seen yet.
-- Phillip Anderson (physicist, Nobel Prize)
Space tells matter how to move: matter tells space how to curve.
-- John Wheeler (physicist)
Matter is Energy is Spacetime
-- Robert March (in Physics for Poets)
American Indian
Song (not typed up yet)
Please email any questions, comments, or suggestions to Professor Bernice Durand, bdurand@theory3.physics.wisc.edu.
Revised October 22, 1997.
Images and layout © 1997, Shane Hamilton