Riding the Curvatures of Spacetime

General Relativity, Gravity, and Cosmology

Class notes by Steve Bryson

• Session 1: A Brief Introduction to General Relativity with some history
• Session 2: Introduction to Four-Dimensional Spacetime
• Session 3: From the Principle of Equivalence to Curvature
• Session 4: Curvature in the Real World, Schwarzschild Geometry and Black Holes
• Session 5: Gravity Waves
• Session 6: Cosmology and the Shape of the Universe

• Recommended Book List

Useful World Wide Web Sites:

On General Relativity:

jean-luc.aei-potsdam.mpg.de/Exhibits/A link to severalintroductions to general relativity with an emphasis oncomputer-based simulation. Look especially at the "spacetimewrinkles" exhibit.

www.maths.soton.ac.uk/applied/relativity/GRExplorer/ A very nice site surveying severalaspects of general relativity

casa.colorado.edu/~ajsh/schw.shtml Movies showing what you'd see as youfell into a black hole.

www.astro.ku.dk/~cramer/RelViz/ More visualizations of the curvedspacetime around a black hole.

www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/gr/public/ The Cambridge University relativitygroup home page. Lots of information about cosmology and blackholes.

On Cosmology:

http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/index.html The WMAP mission web site, with lots of pictures, data,and descriptions of issues in cosmology

http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/cosmolog.htm A very nice cosmology tutorial

On Special Relativity:

www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/relatvty.htmA nice introduction to spacetime diagrams, with a few words aboutcurved space.

www.fourmilab.ch/cship/cship.htmlA wonderful site with lots of graphics showing what it's like tofly close to the speed of light.

On Both:

physics.syr.edu/courses/modules/LIGHTCONE/A wonderful web site explaining relativity from a light-conepoint of view. Very visual with lots of animations.

On Einstein:

www.aip.org/history/einstein/A history page on Einstein from the American Institute ofPhysics, including a recording of Einstein explaining E=mc²!

www.westegg.com/einstein/Lots and lots of Einstein links

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