Astronomy and Space Science

Please join us for a series of talks from Professor Philip Mannheim, University of Connecticut. St. Andrews Global Fellow and SUPA Visitor

Gravity in a Nutshell

 The talks will be a pedagogical introduction to the theory of gravity for graduate students and nonexperts. Topics covered are:

·         Newton's Laws of motion and gravity: successes and shortcomings. 

·         Special relativity: how to include gravity.

·         Curvilinear coordinates: accelerating observers in flat space in the absence of gravity. Mach both right and wrong.

·         Newton's Laws of Motion in an accelerating coordinate system in the absence of gravity.

·         Need for Levi-Civita connection (Christoffel symbols). Role of metric. Geodesics. Equivalence Principle.

·         Riemann curvature. Examples of curved spaces.

·         Newton's Laws of Motion in an accelerating coordinate system in the presence of gravity.

·         Newton's Law of Gravity in an accelerating coordinate system in the presence of gravity.

·         v squared over c squared  gravitational corrections to Newton's Law of gravity.

·         Einstein Equations and gravitational Poisson equation in an accelerating coordinate system.

·         Exact all order Schwarzschild solution and black holes.

·         Einstein gravity: successes and shortcomings. 

·         The dark matter problem.

·         The dark energy problem.

·         The quantum gravity problem.

·         Does gravity know about quantum mechanics: Chandrasekhar mass, Cosmic Microwave Background, Colella-Overhauser-Werner Experiment. Where did the zero-point energy go

If you have any further queries, please contact us at admin@supa.ac.uk.

Thanks,
SUPA