Relativity and geometry

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Early in this century, it was shown that the new non-Newtonian physics — known as Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity — rested on a new, non-Euclidean geometry, which incorporated time and space into a unified "chronogeometric" structure. This high-level study elucidates the motivation and significance of the changes in physical geometry brought about by Einstein, in both the first and the second phase of Relativity.After a discussion of Newtonian principles and 19th-century views on electrodynamics and the aether, the author offers illuminating expositions of Einstein's electrodynamics of moving bodies, Minkowski spacetime, Einstein's quest for a theory of gravity, gravitational geometry, the concept of simultaneity, time and causality and other topics. An important Appendix — designed to define spacetime curvature — considers differentiable manifolds, fiber bundles, linear connections and useful formulae.Relativity continues to be a major focus of interest for physicists, mathematicians and philosophers of science. This highly regarded work offers them a rich, "historico-critical" exposition — emphasizing geometrical ideas — of the elements of the Special and General Theory of Relativity.