Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Background: what you need to know before you start
- 1 Gravity on Earth:
- 2 And then came Newton
- 3 Satellites
- 4 The Solar System
- 5 Tides and tidal forces
- 6 Interplanetary travel
- 7 Atmospheres
- 8 Gravity in the Sun
- 9 Reaching for the stars
- 10 The colors of stars
- 11 Stars at work
- 12 Birth to death
- 13 Binary stars
- 14 Galaxies
- 15 Physics at speed
- 16 Relating to Einstein
- 17 Spacetime geometry
- 18 Einstein's gravity
- 19 Einstein's recipe
- 20 Neutron stars
- 21 Black holes
- 22 Gravitational waves
- 23 Gravitational lenses
- 24 Cosmology
- 25 The Big Bang
- 26 Einstein's Universe
- 27 Ask the Universe
- Appendix: values of useful constants
- Glossary
- Index
15 - Physics at speed
Einstein stands on Galileo's shoulders
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Background: what you need to know before you start
- 1 Gravity on Earth:
- 2 And then came Newton
- 3 Satellites
- 4 The Solar System
- 5 Tides and tidal forces
- 6 Interplanetary travel
- 7 Atmospheres
- 8 Gravity in the Sun
- 9 Reaching for the stars
- 10 The colors of stars
- 11 Stars at work
- 12 Birth to death
- 13 Binary stars
- 14 Galaxies
- 15 Physics at speed
- 16 Relating to Einstein
- 17 Spacetime geometry
- 18 Einstein's gravity
- 19 Einstein's recipe
- 20 Neutron stars
- 21 Black holes
- 22 Gravitational waves
- 23 Gravitational lenses
- 24 Cosmology
- 25 The Big Bang
- 26 Einstein's Universe
- 27 Ask the Universe
- Appendix: values of useful constants
- Glossary
- Index
Summary
We have allowed gravity to take us on a tour of the Universe in the first half of this book. It has taken us from the planet Earth to the rest of the Solar System, then to other stars, and from there to galaxies. Gravity wants to lead us further, because we have not yet come to understand its most profound consequences. These include black holes, which we met briefly in Chapter 4, and the Big Bang, which is the beginning of time itself.
In this chapter: we embark on relativity. We present the fundamental ideas of special relativity. Einstein based it partly on Galileo's relativity, partly on a new principle about the speed of light. We discover the main consequences of the theory, which we require for the development of general relativity in the rest of this book.
These matters require strong gravity: gravity that is strong enough to trap light in a black hole or to arrest the expansion of the entire Universe. Studying strong gravity takes us beyond the limits where we can trust Newton's theory of gravity and his laws of motion.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Gravity from the Ground UpAn Introductory Guide to Gravity and General Relativity, pp. 179 - 194Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003