Reflections on Relativity

Preface 1 1. First Principles 1.1 Experience and Spacetime 3 1.2 Systems of Reference 9 1.3 Inertia and Relativity 16 1.4 The Relativity of Light 23 1.5 Corresponding States 33 1.6 A More Practical Arrangement 44 1.7 Staircase Wit 58 1.8 Another Symmetry 65 1.9 Null Coordinates 72 2. A Complex of Phenomena 2.1 The Spacetime Interval 81 2.2 Force Laws and Maxwell's Equations 88 2.3 The Inertia of Energy 98 2.4 Doppler Shift for Sound and Light 111 2.5 Stellar Aberration 118 2.6 Mobius Transformations of the Night Sky 131 2.7 The Sagnac Effect 140 2.8 Refraction Between Moving Media 151 2.9 Accelerated Travels 159 2.10 The Starry Messenger 173 2.11 Thomas Precession 183 3. Several Valuable Suggestions 3.1 Postulates and Principles 192 3.2 Natural and Violent Motions 202 3.3 De Mora Luminis 209 3.4 Stationary Paths 218 3.5 A Quintessence of So Subtle a Nature 224 3.6 The End of My Latin 230 3.7 Zeno and the Paradox of Motion 238 3.8 A Very Beautiful Day 245 3.9 Constructing the Principles 251 4. Weighty Arguments 4.1 Immovable Spacetime 256 4.2 Inertial and Gravitational Separations 265 4.3 Free-Fall Equations 270 4.4 Force, Curvature, and Uncertainty 274 4.5 Conventional Wisdom 280 4.6 The Field of All Fields 292 4.7 The Inertia of Twins 297 4.8 The Breakdown of Simultaneity 301 5. Extending the Principle 5.1 Vis Inertiae 308 5.2 Tensors, Contravariant and Covariant 313 5.3 Curvature, Intrinsic and Extrinsic 323 5.4 Relatively Straight 340 5.5 Schwarzschild Metric from Kepler's 3rd Law 349 5.6 The Equivalence Principle 354 5.7 Riemannian Geometry 359 5.8 The Field Equations 370 6. Ist Das Wirklich So? 6.1 An Exact Solution 382 6.2 Anomalous Precession 389 6.3 Bending Light 400 6.4 Radial Paths in a Spherically Symmetrical Field 408 6.5 Intersecting Orbits 413 6.6 Ideal Clocks in Arbitrary Motion 419 6.7 Acceleration in Schwarzschild Coordinates 425 6.8 Sources in Motion 431 7. Cosmology 7.1 Is the Universe Closed? 438 7.2 The Formation and Growth of Black Holes 449 7.3 Falling Into and Hovering Near A Black Hole 458 7.4 Curled-Up Dimensions 468 7.5 Packing Universes In Spacetime 472 7.6 Multiple Hubble Constants? 478 7.7 Boundaries and Symmetries 486 7.8 Global Interpretations of Local Experience 493 8. The Secret Confidence of Nature 8.1 Kepler, Napier, and the Third Law 505 8.2 Newton's Cosmological Queries 510 8.3 The Helen of Geometers 518 8.4 Refractions On Relativity 521 8.5 Scholium 531 8.6 On Gauss' Mountains 536 8.7 Strange Meeting 541 8.8 Who Invented Relativity? 548 8.9 Paths Not Taken 559 9. The Relativistic Topology 9.1 In The Neighborhood 567 9.2 Up To Diffeomorphism 576 9.3 Higher-Order Metrics 579 9.4 Spin and Polarization 584 9.5 Entangled Events 587 9.6 Von Neumann's Postulate and Bell's Freedom 593 9.7 The Gestalt of Determinism 599 9.8 Quaedam Tertia Natura Abscondita 602 9.9 Locality and Temporal Asymmetry 606 9.10 Spacetime Mediation of Quantum Interactions 611 Conclusion 618 Appendix: Mathematical Miscellany 620 Bibliography 633

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