Einstein Modern Physics: First Edition (5 results)

Hardcover. Condition: Like New. First Edition. First Edition, First Printing. Published by PublicAffairs, 2024. Octavo. Hardcover. Book is like new. Dust jacket is like new.

Hardcover. Condition: Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Fine. 1st Edition. B Science- Einstein: This is the first edition hardcover, fine in an unclipped dj, red spine, white title.

Hardcover. Condition: As New. Dust Jacket Condition: As New. 1st Edition. Illustrated (illustrator).

First edition. GÖDEL ON TIME TRAVEL. First edition, journal issue, in original printed wrappers, of Gödel's 'time-travel paper,' 'one of the most important [papers] on relativity since my own original paper appeared' (Einstein to Morgenstern, 1952). "In the 1920s and 1930s, the Friedmann-Robertson-Walker cosmological models had been introduced as the simplest solutions of the equations of Einstein's general theory of relativity that were consistent with the observed red-shift of distant galaxies. These models were spatially homogenous and isotropic, and were expanding but were non-rotating. Gödel was the first to consider models that were rotating. The possible rotation of the universe has a special significance in general relativity because one of the influences that led Einstein to the theory in 1915 was Mach's principle. The exact formulation of the principle is rather obscure, but it is generally interpreted as denying the existence of absolute space. In other words, matter has inertia only relative to other matter in the universe. The principle is generally taken to imply that the local inertial frame defined by gyroscopes should be non-rotating with respect to the frame defined by distant galaxies. Gödel showed that it was possible to have solutions of the Einstein field equations in which the galaxies were rotating with respect to the local inertial frame. He therefore demonstrated that general relativity does not incorporate Mach's principle . In [the offered paper] Gödel presented a rotating solution that was not expanding but was the same at all points of space and time. This solution was the first to be discovered that had the curious property that in it it was possible to travel into the past. This leads to the paradoxes such as 'What happens if you go back and kill your father when he was a baby?' It is generally agreed that this cannot happen in a solution that represents our universe, but Gödel was the first to show that it was not forbidden by the Einstein equations. His solution generated a lot of discussion of the relation between general relativity and the concept of causality" (Stephen Hawking, p. 189 in Kurt Gödel: Collected Works: Volume II: Publications 1938-1974). "Gödel's brilliant burst into the world of physics in 1949 came as a surprise to those who knew him "only" as one of the greatest logicians of all time and thus as a very pure mathematician. However, to his colleagues at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, it was less surprising. At IAS, he had famously befriended Einstein, and much earlier, before switching over to mathematics, he had even entered the University of Vienna (in 1924) as a physics student and attended lectures by Hans Thirring, one of the earliest protagonists of Einstein's theories. Moreover, although this was not apparent from his published work, Gödel had maintained a lifelong interest in physics, attending the physics seminars at IAS and keeping abreast of ongoing developments. Then came the crucial trigger: the year 1949 brought Einstein's seventieth birthday, and Gödel was expected to contribute to the planned Festschrift for his friend. Not for the first time did pressure prove conducive to invention" (Rindler, p. 185). Gödel's Festschrift contribution, 'A Remark about the Relationship between Relativity Theory and Idealistic Philosophy' (pp. 557-562 in Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist, P.A. Schilpp (ed.), 1949), appeared almost simultaneously with the offered paper. It treated the philosophical implications of Gödel's model, while the offered work provides the technical derivation from the Einstein field equations. "Gödel stated that he was motivated to invent his model universe from sympathy for Kant's philosophy of time. It was to serve as the first counterexample on the cosmic scale to the objective view of time, which treats time as an infinity of layers "now" coming into existence successively. By 1905, Einstein had already shown this view to be problematic with his special theory of relativity. Indeed, one of the greatest shocks delivered by that theory was the discovery that simultaneity is relative . The situation becomes even worse with the space-times of general relativity that correspond to real-life irregular matter distributions. Only in the idealized homogeneous-isotropic universes introduced by [Alexander] Friedman ['Über die Krümmung des Raumes' & 'Über die Möglichkeit einer Welt mit konstanter negativer Krümmung des Raumes,' Zeitschrift für Physik, 1922 & 1924] of which the 1917 static Einstein universe was a special case ['Kosmologische Betrachtungen zur allgemeinen Relativitatstheorie,' Sitzungsberichte der Königlich preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften], do we find an absolutely (geometrically) determined worldwide time. These universes (except the Einstein universe) expand with a single expansion function, and their intrinsically determined time slices correspond to constant values of their steadily diminishing density. Thus the objective (or absolute) view of time got a reprieve from Friedmanian cosmology - which Gödel dismissed as accidental. His purported aim was to show that in more general cosmologies, no such objective time need exist" (ibid., p. 188). The idea for the particular model Gödel constructed probably arose from his reading of a paper by George Gamow ('Rotating universe?', Nature vol. 158, 19 October 1946, p. 549) which suggested that the whole universe might be in a state of uniform rotation and that this rotation might explain the observed rotation of galactic systems: "One of the most mysterious results of the astronomical studies of the universe lies in the fact that all successive degrees of accumulation of matter, such as planets, stars and galaxies, are found in the state of more or less rapid axial rotation. In various cosmogonical theories the rotation of planets has been explained as resulting from the rotation of stars from which they were formed. The rotation of stars th.…

1st Edition. FIRST EDITION IN ORIGINAL WRAPS OF SIGNIFICANT CORRECTIONS & ADDITIONS BY EINSTEIN & STRAUS TO AN IMPORTANT PAPER; AS WELL, A PAPER BY CHANDRASEKHAR ON THE ORIGIN OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM. In 1945 Albert Einstein and Ernst G. Straus introduced their Swiss cheese model of the universe in a paper entitled "The Influence of the Expansion of Space on the Gravitation Fields Surrounding the Individual Stars". (Weil 216). The following year they published "Corrections and Additional Remarks to Our Paper" (the 1945 paper), the paper offered here. In early 1945, Einstein returned to long held cosmological questions as he sought to try to understand whether the expansion of the universe caused the solar system to expand as well - or more specifically, the influence of the expansion of space on the gravitational field in the neighborhood of a star. Working with Straus, the two began studying the effect of inhomogeneities in an expanding model. "By the spring of 1945, Einstein and Straus had found a new type of possible universe using Einstein's equations. It described a universe which looked largely like one of the simple expanding universes of Friedmann and Lemaître containing material (like galaxies) which exerted no pressure. But it has spherical regions removed from it, like bubbles in a Swiss cheese. Each empty hole then had a mass placed at its centre. The mass was equal in magnitude to what had been excavated to create the hole. This was a step towards a more realistic universe in which the matter was not smoothly spread with the same density everywhere but gathered up into lumps, like galaxies, which were spread about in empty space. (Barrow, The Book of Universes, 106-107). ALSO INCLUDED: S. Chandrasekhar's "On a New Theory of Weizsäcker on the Origin of the Solar System". In 1945, C. F. v. Weizsäcker proposed a new theory of the origin of the solar system which appeared to merit consideration. Weizsäcker argued "that there [would be] turbulence in the solar nebula which would give rise to the formation of eddies having angular motion opposite to that of the rotation of the nebula" (Abhyankar, The Origin, BASI, 26, 339). Weizsäcker's "principal idea [was] to regard the formation of a planetary system around a star as a possible last stage in the formation of the star itself" (Chandrasekhar, 1946, 94). He believed that "the protoplanets were supposed to have formed at the sites of the ball bearing eddies and the merger of the protoplanets in the same orbit produced the known planets" (Abhyankar, 343). In the paper offered here, the Indian American astrophysicist S. Chandrasekhar challenged Weizsäcker's theory and showed "that there will be a wide spectrum of turbulence with smaller eddies within the larger ones and there would be no regular pattern as suggested by Weizsäcker. Further the life time of the eddies will be too short for the formation of the planets" (ibid). In other words, Chandrasekhar's work "indicated that the regular pattern of vortices originally postulated by Weizsäcker could not occur, but instead must be replaced by a range of eddy sizes" (Brush, A History of Modern Planetary Physics, 14). Chandrasekhar's work led to the abandonment of Weizsäcker's theories. INCLUDED: Nobel Prize winner Percy Williams Bridgman's "Recent Work in the Field of High Pressures," pp. 1-94 (an important review of work done in the field of high pressure physics between Bridgman's seminal 1930 work and 1946, the year he won the prize) and R. Samuel's "The Dissociation Spectra of Covalent Polyatomic Molecules", pp. 103-148. CONDITION & DETAILS: Lancaster: American Physical Society. Complete issue in original wraps. 4to. (10.5 x 8 inches; 263 x 200mm). Very slight wear at the edges of the wraps and head and foot of the spine; small closed tear (see images). Bright and clean throughout. Very good condition.…