A Journey into Gravity and Spacetime (Scientific American Library) Book

Driven by the belief that gravity makes the closest connection between the world we see around us and the inner-most workings of the universe, distinguished physicist John Archibald Wheeler applies Einstein's battle-tested theory to both familiar and exotic pheonomena. Gravity, he shows, is not a force acting at a distance; it is mass gripping spacetime, telling it how to curve, and spacetime gripping mass, telling it how to move. Chronicling first the ideas and contributions of Newton, Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, Karl Friedrich Gauss, Bernhard Riemann, and Ernst Mach, Wheeler then turns to the insights of Einstein's followers. In describing the workings of gravity, Wheeler draws on everything from flying tennis balls, to hurling gravity waves from crashing stars, the motion of the planets, and the collapse of a star into a black hole. An imaginative account by a physicist who has participated in most of the important work in physics of the last 50 years, A Journey into Gravity and Spacetime is an important addition to personal and academic collections.Read More