Reinventing gravity : a physicist goes beyond Einstein
- Moffat, John W.
- 1st ed.
- New York : Smithsonian Books/Collins, c2008.
- Physical description
- xiv, 272 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.
QC178 .M64 2008
- Unknown QC178 .M64 2008
- Includes bibliographical references (p. -259) and index.
- A new gravity theory
- The elusive planet Vulcan, a parable
- Discovering and reinventing gravity
- The Greeks to Newton
- The standard model of gravity
- The beginnings of modern cosmology
- Dark matter
- Conventional black holes
- Updating the standard model
- Inflation and variable speed of light (VSL)
- New cosmological data
- Searching for a new gravity theory
- Strings and quantum gravity
- Other alternative gravity theories
- Modified gravity (MOG)
- Envisioning and testing the MOG universe
- The pioneer anomaly
- MOG as a predictive theory
- Cosmology without dark matter
- Do black holes exist in nature?
- Dark energy and the accelerating universe
- The eternal universe.
- Publisher's Summary
- While supporting his sick parents, Moffat spent his free time in the library, teaching himself in the course of a year both modern physics and the mathematics needed to work in it. Then, daringly, he wrote a letter to Einstein, identifying problems in one of the great man's papers. A correspondence was struck, but, because Moffat couldn't read German, he would take the letters to his barber to have them translated. The press caught wind of the story, which brought Moffat to the attention of Niels Bohr.With Einstein and Bohr's help, Moffat soon began a doctorate at Cambridge. His first bold stroke had taken him far, and would take him farther, ultimately to point out not just some of Einstein's small mistakes, but to revise his entire theory. Physicists have long known that something is wrong: Einstein's relativity and the theory of quantum mechanics are fundamentally incompatible, which has prompted the last twenty years' work in string theory. But Moffat has identified a bigger problem: not only does Einstein's theory not work in the world of the small, it doesn't seem to work in the world of the very large either.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)
- Publication date
- John W. Moffat.