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Lecture

Curved Space-Time

In courses (2)

PHYS-427: Relativity and cosmology I

Introduce the students to general relativity and its classical tests. ...

PHYS-428: Relativity and cosmology II

This course is the basic introduction to modern cosmology. It introduces students to the main concepts and formalism of cosmology, the observational status of Hot Big Bang theory and discusses major physical processes in the early Universe. ...

Description

This lecture discusses the concept of curved space-time, providing examples and explaining the correspondence with Newton's theory. The instructor presents arguments against scalar gravity and explores the relativistic effects of motion in a curved space-time.

Instructor

Victor Gorbenko

Official source

Ontological neighbourhood

Mathematics

Geometry: Differential geometry

Related concepts (32)

Spacetime

In physics, spacetime is any mathematical model that fuses the three dimensions of space and the one dimension of time into a single four-dimensional continuum. Spacetime diagrams are useful in visualizing and understanding relativistic effects such as how different observers perceive where and when events occur. Until the turn of the 20th century, the assumption had been that the three-dimensional geometry of the universe (its description in terms of locations, shapes, distances, and directions) was distinct from time (the measurement of when events occur within the universe).

Curvature

In mathematics, curvature is any of several strongly related concepts in geometry. Intuitively, the curvature is the amount by which a curve deviates from being a straight line, or a surface deviates from being a plane. For curves, the canonical example is that of a circle, which has a curvature equal to the reciprocal of its radius. Smaller circles bend more sharply, and hence have higher curvature. The curvature at a point of a differentiable curve is the curvature of its osculating circle, that is the circle that best approximates the curve near this point.

Absolute space and time

Absolute space and time is a concept in physics and philosophy about the properties of the universe. In physics, absolute space and time may be a preferred frame. A version of the concept of absolute space (in the sense of a preferred frame) can be seen in Aristotelian physics. Robert S. Westman writes that a "whiff" of absolute space can be observed in Copernicus's De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, where Copernicus uses the concept of an immobile sphere of stars.

Philosophy of space and time

Philosophy of space and time is the branch of philosophy concerned with the issues surrounding the ontology and epistemology of space and time. While such ideas have been central to philosophy from its inception, the philosophy of space and time was both an inspiration for and a central aspect of early analytic philosophy. The subject focuses on a number of basic issues, including whether time and space exist independently of the mind, whether they exist independently of one another, what accounts for time's apparently unidirectional flow, whether times other than the present moment exist, and questions about the nature of identity (particularly the nature of identity over time).

Gravity

In physics, gravity () is a fundamental interaction which causes mutual attraction between all things that have mass. Gravity is, by far, the weakest of the four fundamental interactions, approximately 1038 times weaker than the strong interaction, 1036 times weaker than the electromagnetic force and 1029 times weaker than the weak interaction. As a result, it has no significant influence at the level of subatomic particles.

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