Search results for ""Author Vesselin Petkov""

In 1908 Hermann Minkowski gave the four-dimensional(spacetime) formulationof special relativity[1]. In fact,HenriPoincare[ ' 2] rst noticedin1906that the Lorentz transformations had a geometric interpretation as rotations in a four-dimensional space with time as the fourth dimension. However it was Minkowski, who succe- fully decoded the profound message about the dimensionality of the world hidden in the relativity postulate, which re ects the experimental fact that natural laws are the same in all inertial reference frames. Unlike Poincare, ' Minkowski did not regardspacetime - the uni cation of space and time - as a convenientmathematical space, but insisted that this absolute four-dimensional world, as Minkowski called it, represents physical phenomena and the world more adequately than the relativity postulate: "the word relativity-postulate...seems to me very feeble. Since the pos- late comes to mean that only the four-dimensional world in space and time is given by the phenomena...I prefer to call it the postulate of the absolute world"[3]. The impact of Minkowski's ideas on the twentieth century physics has been so immense that one cannot imagine modern physics without the notion of spacetime. It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that spacetime has been the greatest discoveryinphysicsofall times. Theonlyotherdiscoverythatcomesclosetospa- time is Einstein's general relativity, which revealed that gravity is a manifestation of the curvature of spacetime. But it was the discovery of spacetime, which paved the way for this deep understanding of what gravity really is. Einstein saw the link betweenthegeometryofspacetimeandgravitationonlyafterheovercamehis initial hostile attitude toward the notion of spacetime.

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The Springer Handbook of Spacetime is dedicated to the ground-breaking paradigm shifts embodied in the two relativity theories, and describes in detail the profound reshaping of physical sciences they ushered in. It includes in a single volume chapters on foundations, on the underlying mathematics, on physical and astrophysical implications, experimental evidence and cosmological predictions, as well as chapters on efforts to unify general relativity and quantum physics. The Handbook can be used as a desk reference by researchers in a wide variety of fields, not only by specialists in relativity but also by researchers in related areas that either grew out of, or are deeply influenced by, the two relativity theories: cosmology, astronomy and astrophysics, high energy physics, quantum field theory, mathematics, and philosophy of science. It should also serve as a valuable resource for graduate students and young researchers entering these areas, and for instructors who teach courses on these subjects.The Handbook is divided into six parts. Part A: Introduction to Spacetime Structure. Part B: Foundational Issues. Part C: Spacetime Structure and Mathematics. Part D: Confronting Relativity theories with observations. Part E: General relativity and the universe. Part F: Spacetime beyond Einstein.

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