Gravity from the Ground Up An Introductory Guide to Gravity and General Relativity

An accessible introduction to astronomy and general relativity, requiring only high-school level mathematics.

This book invites the reader to understand our Universe, not just marvel at it. From the clock-like motions of the planets to the catastrophic collapse of a star into a black hole, gravity controls the Universe. Gravity is central to modern physics, helping to answer the deepest questions about the nature of time, the origin of the Universe and the unification of the forces of nature. Linking key experiments and observations through careful physical reasoning, the author builds the reader's insight step-by-step from simple but profound facts about gravity on Earth to the frontiers of research. Topics covered include the nature of stars and galaxies, the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy, black holes, gravitational waves, inflation and the Big Bang. Suitable for general readers and for undergraduate courses, the treatment uses only high-school level mathematics, supplemented by optional computer programs, to explain the laws of physics governing gravity.

Preface; 1. Gravity on Earth: the inescapable force; 2. And then came Newton: gravity takes center stage; 3. Satellites: what goes up doesn't always come down; 4. The Solar System: a triumph for Newtonian gravity; 5. Tides and tidal forces: the real signature of gravity; 6. Interplanetary travel: the cosmic roller-coaster; 7. Atmospheres: keeping planets covered; 8. Gravity in the Sun: keeping the heat on; 9. Reaching for the stars: the emptiness of outer space; 10. The colors of stars: why they are black (bodies); 11. Stars at work: factories for the Universe; 12. Birth to death: the life cycle of the stars; 13. Binary stars: tidal forces on a huge scale; 14. Galaxies: atoms in the Universe; 15. Physics near the speed of light: Einstein stands on Galileo's shoulders; 16. Relating to Einstein: logic and experiment in relativity; 17. Spacetime geometry: finding out what is not relative; 18. Einstein's gravity: the curvature of spacetime in the Solar System; 19. Einstein's recipe: fashioning the geometry of gravity; 20. Neutron stars: laboratories of strong gravity; 21. Black holes: gravity's one-way street; 22. Gravitational waves: gravity speaks; 23. Gravitational lenses: bringing the Universe into focus; 24. Cosmology: the study of everything; 25. Big Bang: the seed from which we grew; 26. Einstein's Universe: the geometry of cosmology; 27. Ask the Universe: cosmic questions at the frontiers of gravity; Appendix A. Useful constants: values used in this book; Appendix B. Background: what you need to know before you start.

An accessible introduction to astronomy and general relativity, using only high-school level mathematics to explain the laws of physics governing gravity. Suitable as a university textbook for introductory physics and astronomy courses, the book will also be of interest to general readers wishing to understand the workings of our universe.

Bernard Schutz has done research and teaching in general relativity and especially its applications in astronomy since 1970. He is the author of more than 200 publications, including Geometrical Methods of Mathematical Physics and A First Course in General Relativity (both published by Cambridge University Press). Schutz currently specialises in gravitational wave research, studying the theory of potential sources and designing new methods for analysing the data from current and planned detectors. He is a member of most of the current large-scale gravitational wave projects: GEO600 (of which he is a PI), the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, and LISA. Schutz is a Director of the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics, also known as the Albert Einstein Institute (AEI), in Potsdam, Germany. He holds a part-time chair in Physics and Astronomy at Cardiff University, Wales, as well as honorary professorships at Potsdam and Hanover universities in Germany. Educated in the USA, he taught physics and astronomy for twenty years at Cardiff before moving to Germany in 1995 to the newly-founded AEI. In 1998 he founded the open-access online journal Living Reviews in Relativity. The Living Reviews family now includes six journals. In 2006 he was awarded the Amaldi Gold Medal of the Italian Society for Gravitation (SIGRAV), and in 2011 he received an honorary DSc from the University of Glasgow. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the Institute of Physics, an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, and a member of the Learned Society of Wales, the German Academy of Natural Sciences Leopoldina and the Royal Society of Arts and Sciences, Uppsala.