Book Description

How do single cells recognize gravity and apply their perception to their ecological advantage? This book summarizes historical and current approaches to this basic question. Single cells play a significant role in food webs and also present valuable model systems for studying the mechanisms of gravity perception, a topic of increasing interest in these days of experimentation in space. The book is directed to biologists and other life scientists interested in space sciences, cellular evolution, cell motility, signal transduction and ecophysiology. ... Read more

Book Description

This is a graduate textbook. ... Read more

Book Description

Driven by the belief that gravity makes the closest connection between the world we see around us and the inner-most workings of the universe, distinguished physicist John Archibald Wheeler applies Einstein's battle-tested theory to both familiar and exotic pheonomena. Gravity, he shows, is not a force acting at a distance; it is mass gripping spacetime, telling it how to curve, and spacetime gripping mass, telling it how to move.Chronicling first the ideas and contributions of Newton, Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, Karl Friedrich Gauss, Bernhard Riemann, and Ernst Mach, Wheeler then turns to the insights of Einstein's followers.

In describing the workings of gravity, Wheeler draws on everything from flying tennis balls, to hurling gravity waves from crashing stars, the motion of the planets, and the collapse of a star into a black hole. An imaginative account by a physicist who has participated in most of the important work in physics of the last 50 years, A Journey into Gravity and Spacetime is an important addition to personal and academic collections. ... Read more

Reviews (4)

Able to "see" spacetime
This is a beautiful, poetic, and generous book. I found that after reading and mulling over each section, I could eventually visualize how space was behaving under the influence of mass, and could also see why one needed to choose one's point of view carefully to understand the physics.

The book is intended as an introduction to general relativity, without much tensor formalism, but it does not neglect the geometrical underpinnings. It presents a very nice way to get at the physics, with creative and light-hearted diagrams.

I'm not so sure that Wheeler's own poems, which introduce many of the chapters, are a great success, but I admire and salute him for including them. Even his poetry helps to open additional doors to understanding general relativity.

A book that is truly beautiful.

Awesome: from an MSEE
The interrelation of gravity and spacetime is a formidable subject to describe; the author does so with excellence. The diagrams and charts reinforce the understanding.

Unfortunately when a key subject left me rather clueless, (Boundary of a Boundary) I spent quite a few frustrated hours being uncertain on whether or not to continue reading without the support of the material on those pages. As it turned out, the subject became clearer once I read on and returned again. I never did grasp it as completely as the rest of the book.

The book contains the most enlightening description of transverse wave propagation I've ever seen. It also helps solidify one's understanding of interval and relativity.

Not a book to be read overnight.

The author's mind has no boundary....
This author is one of the most briliant, the most optimistic, and the most enthusiastic writer in all of physics, and in this book, his competence as a physicist and his deep fascination with the physical world is brought out dramatically. He is clearly a man who is feeling a powerful sense of exhiliration of the discoveries now taking place in all areas of knowledge. His foundation and his theme in the book is a simple geometric principle, namely that the boundary of a boundary is zero. He then guides the reader, assumed to have a rudimentary knowledge of mathematics, in a splendid presentation of the power of this principle in gravitational physics.

The first chapter is an overview of the history behind the subject, via the work of people who contributed to our current understanding of gravity. And then, with a masterfull use of diagrams he gives the reader a taste of the simplicity of the equivalence principle and the need to tack on an additional dimension (time) to the 3-dimensional space of everyday experience. The Pound-Rebka experiment is discussed as one that illustrates the idea of the spacetime interval, and the role of time dilation is discussed via the possibility of practical space travel. And such enthusiasm in his dialog: "the universe will grow ever more exciting", he says, and looking at the developments now taking place in today's science, he is indeed correct.

Chapter 4 gives a fascinating overview of what the author calls the boomerang, which illustrates the action of curvature on nearby test masses. This thought experiment involves the motion of a spacecraft through an imaginary tunnel through the Earth. The author analyzes the motion from the standpoint of Newtonian physics and general relativity. Curvature as the "grammar of gravity" is the topic of the next chapter, with illustrations of the paths of ants on spaces of zero, positive, and negative curvature. A very intuitive treatment of parallel transport around a closed path on a curved surface is given. The tides are discussed as a natural manifestation of the gravitational influence of the Moon on Earth.

Must difficult for a layman to understand is how spacetime acts on masive objects, but the author explains it brilliantly in the next chapter, taught via the concept of "momenergy". This entity is a 4-vector, and the author uses it to show how its creation in a spacetime region can be written as the sum of 8 terms, reflecting the fact that the "boundary" of a four-dimensional block in spacetime consists of eight three-dimensional cubes. That the contents of these cubes sum to zero is the famous "boundary of a boundary is zero", which is discussed in the next chapter. This chapter is one of the best explanations ever given (at this level) of the physics behind spacetime curvature and massive objects. The actual mathematical quantification of curvature is detailed in chapters 8 and 9, using elementary mathematics. The author discusses nicely the famous Scharwzschild geometry.

Concepts of a more concrete nature are discussed in chapter 10, wherein the author discusses the famous Pound-Rebka experiment and planetary motion. This is followed by a discussion of the elusive gravitational waves in chapter 11. Again with a clever use of illustrations, the author explains the transverse property of gravitational waves, and compares gravitational waves with electromagnetic waves. The role of the quadrupole moment in the creation of gravitational waves is brought out briliantly by the author. He discusses briefly various attempts to detect gravitational waves.

Black holes are the topic of chapter 12, wherein the famous Penrose process for extracting energy from a black hole is discussed, and the "no-hair" theorem for black holes. A neat symbolic representation of the Bekenstein number of a black hole is given. The role of the Hawking process, connection quantum processes with the physics of black holes is briefly discussed. The author ends the book with a look at the expansion of the universe, the missing mass problem, and another very interesting topic that has gained much attention recently: the concept of gravitomagnetism. This is a "weak-field" prediction of general relativity, and predicts that the rotation of the Earth should influence the motion of orbiting satellites. This topic is currently bringing together ideas such as the quantum Zeno effect, Mach's principle, and the notorious "frame dragging" effect in general relativity. Experiments do measure it are currently in play and in the proposal stage, namely the LAGEOS and LAGEOS II experiments, which measure the gravitomagnetic orbital perturbation, which is known as the Lense-Thirring effect.

A stunner of a book
This is truely an amazing book. Wheeler does for General Relativity what Hawking did for Cosmology in "A Brief History of Time", and in some sense they are similar books. However Wheeler has a unique, quirky style of writing that makes the book an entertaining adventure to read.

Wheeler is able to pull off a major accomplishment: He explains Einstein's General Relativity in a clear, straightforward manner, with a minimum of math. It's "conventional wisdom" that General Relativity is seriously serious stuff, the domain of hardcore Physics geeks. That doesn't faze Wheeler. He leads the reader along, gleefully pointing out the scenery, making it all look quite simple and understandable. And then all of a sudden, when you least expect it, you find he's derived and presented Einstein's field equations with only a teensy-tiny bit of algebra! Even if you know this stuff already, his presentation makes you think about it with a new perspective.

And did I mention the illustrations? They are really exceptional.

If you have any interest or dealings with GR, ya gotta have this book! ... Read more

Book Description

Collection of papers originally presented at an international conference on Redshifts and Gravitation in a Relativistic Universe, held Sept. 17-20, 1999, in Cesena, Italy. Topics covered include the nature of physical law, the mechanism of gravitation, alternatives to the Big Bang model based on the physics of the microcosm, flaws in the thermodynamics of the Big Bang, the enigma of redshift quantization, the conceptual and mathematical foundations of special relativity and electromagnetism, empirical tests that contradict standard relativity theory. ... Read more

Book Description

"How much does it weigh?" seems a simple question. To scientists and engineers, however, the answer is far from simple, and determining the answer demands consideration of an almost overwhelming number of factors.With an intriguing blend of history, fundamentals, and technical details, the Handbook of Mass Measurement sets forth the details of achieving the highest precision in mass measurements. It covers the whole field, from the development, calibration, and maintenance of mass standards to detailed accounts of weighing designs, balances, and uncertainty. It addresses the entire measurement process and provides in-depth examinations of the various factors that introduce error.Much of the material is the authors' own work and some of it is published here for the first time. Jones and Schoonover are both highly regarded veterans of the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology. With this handbook, they have provided a service and resource vital to anyone involved not only in the determination of mass, but also to the entire field of precision measurement. ... Read more

Book Description

The subjects of general relativity and cosmology have grown significantly in different directions during the last few years. This book, which is the proceedings of the `International Conference on Gravitation and Cosmology -- 95' (ICGC-95) highlights and reviews the current development in these fields.The book contains fourteen plenary lectures reviewing different areas of quantum and classical gravity, observational cosmology and gravitational radiation. It also includes detailed reports on five workshops dealing with the technical developments which have taken place in these areas during the last few years. This book will be of interest to research workers and graduate students working in the area of gravitation and cosmology. ... Read more

Book Description

Solutions of important unsolved problems encountered before and after retirement from NASA. Summary of 65 discoveries without equations, tables, or graphs in the first 23 pages. Simple equations which avoid algebra and calculus.

Major discoveries include relation of gravity to electricity, the related strength of matter, and crucial differences between time based on days and time based on the seasons. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

avoid at all cost
I was asked to review this book as a potential high school text book and was so impressed with how terrible it was that I thought I should pass on the review in case anyone considers actually reading it.

The author has "new interpretations" of experimental evidence that directly contradicts the greatest minds of the last 200 years as well as generally accepted wisdom.If he was right, most of what is published in college text books on geology (I read a UNC - Chapel Hill geology text book 2 years ago as recreational reading to fill a gap in my education).He disputes Einstein's theory of relativity.He argues against much of the physics I learned when I read Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time perhaps half a decade ago.Heck, he even disagrees with fundamental aspects of physics that James Clerk Maxwell wrote in 1873 and are now widely accepted (I didn't actually read Maxwell but did read a Maxwell biographical article in an American Geophysical Union publication last year).

Yet even with a Ph.D. and rather eclectic recreational scientific reading I would have to conduct considerable research to debunk most of what is in this book as most of the book is so convolutedly written as to make understanding what he is trying to say difficult and it covers a wide variety of disciplines.But here are a couple examples.

From back cover "velocity of planet Mercury changes the velocity of reflected light to give the effect of relativity".The deflection of light as it passes close to the sun was explained by Einstein's theory of relativity as being due to the enormous gravity of the sun.Given a choice between believing Einstein and Mayo, I'll choose Einstein.(I have read parts of Einstein's 1929 paper on relatively.)

Page 76:"The widely accepted conclusion that the velocity of light must appear the same to all observers (receptors) resulted from failure to detect predicted effects of a sea of ether."In the early 1800s, scientists familiar with the transfer of wave energy like sound realized that it required a medium to pass through.So they postulated that space, rather than being a vacuum, was actually filled with some vague undetectable substance they called "ether".The sea of ether was disproven in the late 1800s as I recall and disproven well enough that I never expected to see it rise again.

Page 113."In earth expansion all edges of continents fit together around a smaller earth."The author believes the early earth was much smaller than the current earth and that the earth is continuing to expand.This indeed is a "new interpretation of reality." "The objection is that plate tectonics requires that expansion of the Atlantic be offset by equal and opposite shrinkage of the Pacific, which is also expanding."Unfortunately for the author, current GPS data reveals that Easter Island is moving toward South America at a rate of 15 cm/year (which is why the Andes are so tall).

Stephen Hawkins is working on a grand unification theory.Wilbur L. Mayo seems to believe he has discovered much of this himself.Unfortunately to make it all fit together makes it all very complex.Reading this book would be a serious disservice to any one. ... Read more

Book Description

GENERAL CONTENTS Preface History of the subject before the appearance of Newton's "Principia" Extracts from Newton's Principia and "System of the World" Biographical sketch of Newton Bouguer's "The Figure of the Earth" Biographical sketch of Bouguer The Bertier controversy Account of Maskelyne's experiments on Scheliallien Cavendish's "Experiments to determine the mean density of the Earth" Biographical sketch of Cavendish Historical account of the experiments made since the time of Cavendish Table of results of experiments Bibliography Index ... Read more

Book Description

. The twentieth century has brought enormous changes in the physicist's understanding of the fundamental nature of the physical world. These changes were ushered in the century's first decade, with the advent of relativity and quantum theory.With advancing knowledge, the mystery surrounding the ultimate nature of the physical world has deepened, not lessened, and the search for the Holy Grail of a 'Grand Unified Theory' or 'Theory of Everything' continues.This book reveals, in considerable detail, the concepts that have arisen as a result of that search - the 'state of art'. ... Read more

Book Description

This text describes the gravitational interactions and evolution of astronomical systems on all scales, from small groups of stars through galaxies and clusters of galaxies to the Universe itself. In a rapidly developing area of astronomy, it is the first comprehensive treatise on the subject to be published since the early 1960s. Concentrating on the basic physics, at a graduate student level, it also develops many astronomical applications in considerable detail. The book is self-contained. Most results are derived from preceding ones in a straightforward way. It is written to bring out the physical content behind the mathematical formulae, and contains a number of exercises and suggestions for research topics. Bibliographies with nearly 300 selected references provide gateways into the literature. ... Read more

Book Description

Newton's inverse-square law of gravitation has been one of the cornerstones of physics ever since it was proposed 300 years ago. One of its most well known features is the prediction that all objects fall in a gravitational field with the same acceleration. This observation, in the form of the Equivalence Principle, is a fundamental assumption of Einstein's General Relativity Theory. This book traces the history of attempts to test the predictions of Newtonian Gravity, and describes in detail recent experimental efforts to verify both the inverse-square law and the Equivalence Principle. Interest in these questions have increased in recent years, as it has become recognized that deviations from Newtonian gravity could be a signal for a new fundamental force in nature. This is the first book devoted entirely to this subject, and will be useful to both graduate students and researchers interested in this field.

This book describes in detail the ideas that underlie searches for deviations from the predictions of Newtonian gravity, focusing on macroscopic tests, since the question of gravitational effects in quantum systems would warrant a separate work. A historical development is combined with detailed technical discussions of the theoretical ideas and experimental results. A comprehensive bibliography with approximately 450 entries is provided. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Excellent work for all those facinated with phisics
This book was really, really good. I especially liked the pictures that showed balls bouncing against each other and flying back into the air doing that stuff. I think that physics is great. ... Read more

Book Description

These proceedings contain lecture notes on computer algebra, cosmological models, quantum cosmology, and black hole physics. Several research articles which cover different aspects of classical cosmology, exact solutions to Einstein's equations, and quantum field theory are also included. ... Read more

Book Description

Gravitational waves represent today a hot topic,

which promises to play a central role in

astrophysics, cosmology and theoretical physics.

Technological developments have led us to the

brink of their direct observation, which could

become a reality in the coming years.

The direct observation of gravitational waves will

open an entirely new field: gravitational wave

astronomy. This is expected to bring a revolution

in our knowledge of the universe by allowing the

observation of hitherto unseen phenomena such

as coalescence of compact objects (neutron stars

and black holes), fall of stars into supermassive

black holes, stellar core collapses, big-bang relics

and the new and unexpected.

This book provides a comprehensive review of

gravitational waves. It includes a wide range of

contributions by leading scientists in the field.

Topics covered are: basics of GW with some

recent advanced topics, GW detectors,

astrophysics of GW sources, numerical

applications, and several recent theoretical

developments. ... Read more

Reviews (3)

On target fiction re: environment
Remember when you went to see the China Syndrome and you weren't sure which was real - the movie or the event at Three Mile Island? Well, it's similar here. Everytime I put on the news there is yet another strange / destructive natural happening. This novel gives you a sense of what real evironmental horror is.

The REALITY version of Deep Impact / Armegeddon
This is a beautiful mother earth story; I found myself contemplating its poetic vignettes over and over. I look at the planet and mankind a lot differently.

A quirky mother earth novel: frightening & funny & mystical
This book was given to me as a gift. At first, I was disappointed. Who wants a book for Christmas? However, I was pleasantly surprised. I am not an environmentalist type. I don't like being preached to but this novel was able to convey the drama of environmental degradation and the humor of human nature. I found myself crying and laughing. I liked the slant of the novel. It critiqued mankind without necessarily criticizing. The thrust was that humans are also native to the planet. Sometimes I wasn't sure where I was in time and space. I think this was intentional. The characters are engaging and the dialogue is catchy. I felt a little suspended at the end - not disappointed and not let down - but suspended, like I was preparing to ascend to my next destination. That's it. It left you with a sense of destiny, of purpose [ Robin ] ... Read more