General relativity Definition and 999 Threads

We study metrics, in them, we take time as a coordinate. I mean to say that if time is a coordinate then in normal mathematical language, we can have negative coordinate values as well. This confuses me a lot as I want to see and understand the concept from the true physicist's perspective...

As closer the observer will be to the event horizon, the more the time dilatation will be. As we know, if the observer O1 has a clock, another observer O2 very far from the black hole will se the O1 clock "slowing" down as O1 approach the event horizon. The limit is that the O1 clock "stops" at...

In the famous book, Gravitation, by Misner, Thorne and Wheeler, it talks about the stress-energy tensor of a swarm of particles (p.138). The total stress-energy is summed up from all categories of particles. Is summation meaningful in the non-linear theory of Einstein gravitation? Thanks.

I am taking a course on General Relativity. Recently, I was given the following homework assignment, which reads > Derive the following transformation rules for vielbein and spin connection: $$\delta e_a^\mu=(\lambda^\nu\partial_\nu e_a^\mu-e_a^\nu\partial_\nu\lambda^\mu)+\lambda_a^b e_b^\mu$$...

Does $$\partial^\beta(g_{\alpha\beta}A_\mu A^\mu)$$ mean the same as $$\frac {\partial (g_{\alpha\beta}A_\mu A^\mu)}{\partial A^\beta} ?$$ If not could someone explain the differences?

I am doing a project where the final scope is to find an extra operator to include in the proca lagrangian. When finding the new version of this lagrangian i'll be able to use the Euler-Lagrange equation to find the laws of motion for a photon accounting for that particular extra operator. I...

How does general relativity shows the conservation of energy. Because I was reading and listening to something today that touched on this subject. It almost seems as though if you scale GR to larger sizes it stops working and turns into an incomplete law of nature like Newton's laws of gravitation.

To calculate the Riemann coefficient for a metric ##g##, one can employ the second Cartan's structure equation: $$\frac{1}{2} \Omega_{ab} (\theta^a \wedge \theta^b) = -\frac{1}{4} R_{ijkl} (dx^i \wedge dx^j)(dx^k \wedge dx^l)$$ and using the tetrad formalism to compute the coefficients of the...

My name is Dilip (James) I am fascinated by physics and have written three books on the subject, which indicates my level of interest.. My latest book “The Electromagnetic Universe: A New Physics” is available on Amazon and describes in detail: a new theory on the propagation of light, a new...

I am a high-school teacher and a PhD. student. I am looking for ways to introduce my students to GR. In my treatment, I speak about the equivalence principle and later about curvature in general and consequently that of spacetime. I am missing a connection of these two parts that would be...

I have calculated the Christoffel symbols for the above given metric, but I don't understand how to calculate a photon's four-momentum using this information. I believe it has something to do with the null geodesic equation but I can't understand how to put that information into the problem...

In Minkowski spacetime, calculate ##P^{\gamma}_{\alpha}U^{\beta}\partial_{\beta}U^{\alpha}##. I had calculated previously that ##P^{\gamma}_{\alpha}=\delta^{\gamma}_{\alpha}+U_{\alpha}U^{\gamma}## When I subsitute it back into the expression...

What I've done is using the TOV equations and I what I found at the end is: ##e^{[\frac{-8}{3}\pi G\rho]r^2+[\frac{16}{9}(G\pi\rho)^{2}]r^4}-\rho=P(r)## so I am sure that this is not right, if someone can help me knowing it I really apricate it :)

Hi, I'm a 15-year-old high school student and I was wondering what textbook you guys recommend for Special- and General Relativity. I'm familiar with the concept of the Metric Tensor and Christoffel Symbols, but I wanted a good textbook where I can really learn derive it all and gain a deeper...

Suppose you have a tensor quantity called "B" referenced in a certain locally inertial frame (with four Minkowski components for instance). As far as I know, a parallel transportation of this quantity from a certain point "p" to another point "q" consists in expressing it in terms of the...

In classical Hamiltonian mechanics, because of Liouville's theorem about the volume of phase space being preserved by time evolution, there are no attractors. Naively, I think of the Raychaudhuri equation in GR as showing a shrinking volume. However, I guess Raychaudhri's equation does not...

Recently, when reading an entry about Mercury's perihelion shift, someone mentioned a "hand-wavy" explanation as to why GR predicts the orbit so precisely. I was wondering if there was some elementary way to expound on what he was saying. Fundamentally, the comment said something to the effect...

I had some questions about some recently published results on the theoretical aspects of warp-drive. Does the content of the research of Alexey Bobrick, and Gianni Martire proposed in their paper describing their ideas for a warp drive and published in IOP's Classical and Quantum Gravity lead...

(1) I remember reading somewhere that in general relativity, "space" and "time" lose their metrical meanings. Is that true? And yet, we continue talking of space and time in general relativity as spacetime. (2) Moreover, as someone mentioned in this thread, what happens to the speed of light? In...

The International Bureau of Weights and Measures combines the readings of 450 atomic clocks around the world to obtain a time standard with sub-nanosecond accuracy. These clocks run at different rates - a clock at 1 km of altitude gains about 7 ns a day compared to one at sea level due to the...

Hi everybody I saw quite a nice Youtube vid about general relativity and how gravity bends spacetime and therefor redirects angular momentum into the center of gravity. I thought the first time I begun to understand the concept but immediatly the questions poped up. The video basically says...

In the test of General Relativity by perihelion motion of mercury, the stress-energy tensor is set to 0 in Schwarzschild solution. Then, is the curvature caused by solar mass, or by the 0 stress-energy? Or, do we consider solar mass as the gravitating mass? Or the 0 stress-energy the gravitating...

This video explains gravity in a way I haven't encountered before (regardless of how irritating the presenter may be). Nevertheless, I find it hard to believe that a squirrel falls from a tree to the ground due to gravitational time dilation between its head and its feet. The amount is so...

We are discussing the introduction to Einstein field equation, so he start talk about the linearity in Newtonian gravity and the non linearity in GR. But there is somethings I am missing: > " (...) in GR the gravitational field couples to itself (...) A nice way to think about this is provided...

Off the back of a recently closed thread where there was some discussion about the gravitational field of an infinite flat slab, I decided to have a play at investigating that. I've found a few interesting things. It's fairly straightforward to solve for this situation. You use Cartesian-esque...

Hello, What I understood from multiple answers on different threads is that the effect of the time dilation is too small to explain the galaxy rotation curve. I was advised to do some calculations in order to see it myself. And this is what I would like to do but I need some help. - What is...

I know that general relativity fails in singularities like the center of a black hole or the big bang. GR also fails at fundamental particle levels like electrons, protons and neutrons etc. I.e. GR cannot explain interactions of various fundamental particles?? (Am I correct?) But these does...

I was going over the Einstein-Hilbert action derivation of the Einstein field equations and came across a term that does not seem to be explicitly defined. That term is the Langragian for the matter fields. What exactly is matter in General relativity in the context of the Lagrangian? Here is...

Disclaimer - I am not an expert by any means so this might be as much about confirming my understanding as an inquiry from the general public... as such, it might be fairly conversational as I attempt to clearly communicate my thoughts and understanding. Please excuse this. If gravity is the...

Hello. I have a question about the law of energy conservation in GR. As time is inhmogeneous, we don't have energy-momentum 4-vector which would be preserved during system's dynamical change. It is only possible to define 4-vector locally. And next, the problem regarding how to sum this vectors...

Summary:: I am looking for a good introductory book about general relativity at undergraduate level. I am looking for a good introductory book about general relativity at undergraduate level.

I just finished multivariate calculus (without any linear algebra experience yet) and I am seeking out a path to understanding General Relativity. I am wondering what are the mathematical fields after multivariate calculus that I need to master before beginning to understand GR, and what...

I am trying to understand a thought experiment I just posed, which is: if an observer is traveling near the speed of light, and sends out two photons; one in the direction of travel and one in the opposite direction, how does general relativity account for time dilation? The photon "in front"...

Trying to understand how Einstein predicted the appearance of stars during the solar eclipse around the turn of the 20th century (the first experimental confirmation of General Relativity, I believe). My impression, which is not physically correct, is that the sun attracts the photons as they...

General relativity. Curvature of spacetime: ok. time dilation: ok. What about space? Curvature is intrinsic and given by complex equations. But could we definitely say is there more space between 2 points along curved space through the star than would be through flat space (no star there) or...

i'm trying to find what sort of 2-d geometry this system is in, I've been given the line element 𝑑𝑠2=−sin𝜃cos𝜃sin𝜙cos𝜙[𝑑𝜃2+𝑑𝜙2]+(sin2𝜃sin2𝜙+cos2𝜃cos2𝜙)𝑑𝜃𝑑𝜙 where 0≤𝜙<2𝜋 and 0≤𝜃<𝜋/2 Im just not sure where to start. I've tried converting the coordinates to cartesian to see if it yields a...

When parallel transporting a vector along a straight line on flat space, does the connection (when calculating the covariant derivative) always equal zero? Do things change at all when using an arbitrary connection, rather than Christoffel symbols?

Is there a relationship between the Lagrangian ‘hill diagram’ and the spacetime curvature embedment graphs? The Lagrangian map shows effective potential, which deals with centrifugal force. As centrifugal force is a fictitious force (and gravity is as well), I would assume the underlying...

Is there a general method to determine what geometry some line element is describing? I realize that you can tell whether a space is flat or not (by diagonalising the matrix, rescaling etc), but given some arbitrary line element, how does one determine the shape of the space? Thanks

Einstein's theory describes gravity as a curvature of spacetime. As such, everything is affected by it. This includes light, which has no mass, as was made clear for the first time during the famous 1919 solar eclipse. In the standard model, the cause of gravity is supposed to be gravitons...

Background and Motivation The stress energy tensor of general relativity, as conventionally defined, has sixteen components. One of those component, conventionally component T00, also called ρ, is mass-energy density, including the E=mc2 conversion for electromagnetic fields. The other...

HI, I'm curios about the analytic derivation of Mercury perihelion precession starting from EFE - Einstein Field Equation (or simply just from Schwarzschild solution of the EFE). Can you advise me about some source or online material to learn it ? Thanks.

I haven't gone to movie theaters in 6 months. So I have to be content with online movies, and reading sci fi models, and maybe writing a short story or two. If a flying ship could travel thousands of miles per second, it can't suddenly turn 90 degrees because of inertia, the occupants would be...

Hey there.Have you read about the alternative theories proposed by other scientists to General Relativity?So far General Relativity still stays the most accurate.But if we could generalise it?Perhaps try with some new maths like complex differentiable manifolds or Lie groups or another...

Actually I know there would be some permutations used here. I know how to calculate the symbols but estimating is quite a new thing to me

"The dual space is the space of all linear maps from the original vector space to the real numbers." Spacetime and Geometry by Carroll. Dual space can be anything that maps a vector space (including matrix and all other vector spaces) to real numbers. So why do we picked only a vector as a...

Prof Wetterich has proposed that atoms are shrinking rather than the Universe is expanding. Here is a 2013 Nature News article describing his theory: https://www.nature.com/news/cosmologist-claims-universe-may-not-be-expanding-1.13379 Here is his 2013 paper "A Universe without expansion"...

Good day, I'm starting my master in physics, and it's time for me to choose my courses. I will take one or two of the following three courses, which are: Statistical Physics, QFT and General relativity. Now, I'm finding it very hard to decide as on the one hand, I'm interested in QFT and...

Hi, can i use a light clock made out of mirrors a distance appart to measure whether there is length contraction in different regions of spacetime? If the clock speeds up then the distance between the mirrors decreased. If the clock slows down the distance between mirrors increased.

Hi. I have tried David Tong's note on QFT. I think it works well for me and lead me into QFT. Now I am confident to read Peskin's book. Now I am trying to learning GR. I planned to try David Tong's lectures on GR first and then read Sean Carroll's book. But I am not sure this plan now. I got...