It took me at least three attempts for Einstein's General and Special Theory of Relativity to go in.It wasn't that the concept was unbearably hard to grasp - the problem was the language he used to convey the concept. He had a wonderful ability to complicate a simply analogy to the point wherein it became irritatingly hard to understand.
Still, good book, that.
(Still, good book, that.
Ttssattsr,
Fri 11 Jun 2010, 12:23,
archived)
I've actually never read itI may give it a shot. If your maths is fine then Carroll's "Spacetime and Geometry" is probably the best GR (and SR though he assumes you know a lot of SR at the outset) textbook I've found. Easier to read than Wald, a shitload less up its own arse and irritatingly smug than Misner, Thorne and Wheeler, more up-to-date and less heavily based in SR and coordinates than Weinberg.
At heart, general relativity is extremely simple. Just as centrifugal force is a fictional force that only exists when you sit in an accelerating reference frame, gravity is a fictional force that only exists when you sit in an accelerating reference frame. Real forces don't give the same acceleration to any mass - it doesn't make sense for them to. Gravity does. Either nature is fucked up and playing games and making inertial and gravitational mass identical for no good reason or, much more simply, gravity doesn't actually exist as a force.
It's beautiful.
(At heart, general relativity is extremely simple. Just as centrifugal force is a fictional force that only exists when you sit in an accelerating reference frame, gravity is a fictional force that only exists when you sit in an accelerating reference frame. Real forces don't give the same acceleration to any mass - it doesn't make sense for them to. Gravity does. Either nature is fucked up and playing games and making inertial and gravitational mass identical for no good reason or, much more simply, gravity doesn't actually exist as a force.
It's beautiful.
boris the spider,
Fri 11 Jun 2010, 12:30,
archived)
I only read this stuff for personal pleasure, buddy - I don't want to get all math-y.SHUDDER.
( Ttssattsr,
Fri 11 Jun 2010, 12:32,
archived)
Avoid Carroll, thenThere's maths in there I don't know and I do this stuff for a living.
( boris the spider,
Fri 11 Jun 2010, 12:39,
archived)