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Reddit mentions of Spacetime Physics

Sentiment score: 14
Reddit mentions: 18

We found 18 Reddit mentions of Spacetime Physics. Here are the top ones.

Spacetime Physics
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Found 18 comments on Spacetime Physics:

u/Astrokiwi · 17 pointsr/askscience

Quantum mechanics is quite difficult to grasp without a formal mathematical course. General Relativity is also tricky, because it involves a lot of differential geometry.

Special Relativity on the other hand is actually quite straightforward. You don't need any mathematics beyond what you do in high school, and not even all of that - it doesn't require calculus. This was my undergraduate textbook, and it's quite readable. They offer the first chapter of the older edition on their website if you want to take a look. As an example of the readability, here is the opening of the book:

>Once upon a time there was a Daytime surveyor who measured off the king's lands. He took his directions of north and east from a magnetic compass needle. Eastward directions from the center of town he measured in metres (x in meters). Northward directions were sacred and measured in miles (y in miles). His records were complete and accurate and were often consulted by the Daytimers.

And carries on in that tone. Even if you don't read everything, it's worth reading the whole "parable" in that pdf to get a good intuitive grasp of what special relativity is really about.

u/rantonels · 7 pointsr/Physics

ok, the thing is you cannot expect to be able to tackle relativistic quantum field theory without a very solid knowledge of relativity (among other things). A very good introductory textbook to special relativity is Taylor's and Wheeler's, and also Rindler's spends more time explaining tensors and indices.

u/themeaningofhaste · 5 pointsr/AskAcademia

Griffiths is the go-to for advanced undergraduate level texts, so you might consider his Introduction to Quantum Mechanics and Introduction to Particle Physics. I used Townsend's A Modern Approach to Quantum Mechanics to teach myself and I thought that was a pretty good book.

I'm not sure if you mean special or general relativity. For special, /u/Ragall's suggestion of Taylor is good but is aimed an more of an intermediate undergraduate; still worth checking out I think. I've heard Taylor (different Taylor) and Wheeler's Spacetime Physics is good but I don't know much more about it. For general relativity, I think Hartle's Gravity: An Introduction to Einstein's General Relativity and Carroll's Spacetime and Geometry: An Introduction to General Relativity are what you want to look for. Hartle is slightly lower level but both are close. Carroll is probably better if you want one book and want a bit more of the math.

Online resources are improving, and you might find luck in opencourseware type websites. I'm not too knowledgeable in these, and I think books, while expensive, are a great investment if you are planning to spend a long time in the field.

One note: teaching yourself is great, but a grad program will be concerned if it doesn't show up on a transcript. This being said, the big four in US institutions are Classical Mechanics, E&M, Thermodynamics/Stat Mech, and QM. You should have all four but you can sometimes get away with three. Expectations of other courses vary by school, which is why programs don't always expect things like GR, fluid mechanics, etc.

I hope that helps!

u/xrelaht · 5 pointsr/AskPhysics

This should keep you busy, but I can suggest books in other areas if you want.

Math books:
Algebra: http://www.amazon.com/Algebra-I-M-Gelfand/dp/0817636773/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1251516690&sr=8
Calc: http://www.amazon.com/Calculus-4th-Michael-Spivak/dp/0914098918/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1356152827&sr=1-1&keywords=spivak+calculus
Calc: http://www.amazon.com/Linear-Algebra-Dover-Books-Mathematics/dp/048663518X
Linear algebra: http://www.amazon.com/Linear-Algebra-Modern-Introduction-CD-ROM/dp/0534998453/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255703167&sr=8-4
Linear algebra: http://www.amazon.com/Linear-Algebra-Dover-Mathematics-ebook/dp/B00A73IXRC/ref=zg_bs_158739011_2

Beginning physics:
http://www.amazon.com/Feynman-Lectures-Physics-boxed-set/dp/0465023827

Advanced stuff, if you make it through the beginning books:
E&M: http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Electrodynamics-Edition-David-Griffiths/dp/0321856562/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1375653392&sr=8-1&keywords=griffiths+electrodynamics
Mechanics: http://www.amazon.com/Classical-Dynamics-Particles-Systems-Thornton/dp/0534408966/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1375653415&sr=8-1&keywords=marion+thornton
Quantum: http://www.amazon.com/Principles-Quantum-Mechanics-2nd-Edition/dp/0306447908/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1375653438&sr=8-1&keywords=shankar

Cosmology -- these are both low level and low math, and you can probably handle them now:
http://www.amazon.com/Spacetime-Physics-Edwin-F-Taylor/dp/0716723271
http://www.amazon.com/The-First-Three-Minutes-Universe/dp/0465024378/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1356155850&sr=8-1&keywords=the+first+three+minutes

u/iamhove · 5 pointsr/science

His primary point is sound. The light speed limit isn't a limit in the frame of the traveler.
The Taylor and Wheeler classic: http://www.amazon.com/Spacetime-Physics-Edwin-F-Taylor/dp/0716723271 is relevant here.
You can get around where you will in as short a time as you like given the ability to scoot. I recall programming a solver for this just outta high school and being astounded that most places in the universe are reachable even at a modest 1g. But you'd need mountains of fuel to with ungodly conversion ratios and nevermind the shielding to make it. ... And then, if you went too far, in what kind of place would you be arriving? It looks like a big crunch is out, so you just might run yourself early into a big rip?

u/[deleted] · 4 pointsr/Physics

If you're only relatively new to physics (you said you were learning kinematics at the moment) then I would recommend something simpler than Carroll's notes that were already mentioned. These are aimed at a more advanced audience.

You will have to have a solid understanding of Special Relativity, and for that I would recommend the book by Taylor and Wheeler as a good starting point for Relativity.

u/InfanticideAquifer · 3 pointsr/philosophy

The claim that "time is exactly like space" is not true. Time is treated as a dimension in Special Relativity (SR) and General Relativity (GR), but it is very different from the "usual" spatial dimensions. (It boils down to "distance" along the time direction being negative, but that statement doesn't really mean anything out of context.) The central idea of relativity is that while the entire four dimensional "thing" (spacetime) just is (is invariant), different observers will have different ideas about which way the time direction points; it turns out to be convenient for our description of nature to respect the natural "democratic" equivalence of all hypothetical observers.

I can point you to a couple of good resources:

This
is a very good, book about SR, and some "other stuff". It's pretty mathematical, and I wouldn't recommend it to someone who isn't totally comfortable with college level intro physics and calculus.

This
is the "standard" text for undergraduate SR; it's less demanding than the above, but uses mathematical language that won't translate immediately if you go on to study GR. (I have not read this myself.)

This is the book that I learned from; I thought it was pretty good.

This is Brian Greene's famous popularization of String Theory. It has chapters in the beginning on SR and Quantum Mechanics that I think are quite good.

This is Einstein's own popularization, only algebra required. All the examples that others use to explain SR pretty much come from here, and sometimes it's good to go right to the source.

This is a collection of the most important works leading up to and including relativity, from Galileo to Einstein, in case you'd like to take a look at the original paper (translated). The SR paper requires more of a conceptual physical background than a mathematical one; the same can't be said of the included GR paper.

I don't know what your background is--the first three options above are textbooks, and that's probably much more than you were hoping to get into. The last three are not; the book by Brian Greene and the collection (edited by Stephen Hawking) are interesting for other reasons besides relativity as well. For SR, though, another book by Greene might be a bit better: this.

u/oro_boris · 3 pointsr/Physics

Spacetime Physics: Introduction to Special Relativity

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0716723271/

is an excellent modern introduction, fun to read, and highly recommended.

u/lohborn · 2 pointsr/explainlikeimfive

I think you are getting it.

If you want to understand all the cool, weird stuff including about the order of events, time changing, space shrinking and momentum changing read Spacetime Physics. It is easy to understand and comprehensive.

u/nonpareilpearl · 2 pointsr/reddit.com

I just want to start by saying that in order to fully understand how Relativity, and Special Relativity, work that you will need to be able to understand the physics and mathematical concepts behind the theory. If you would like to do this, I recommend a book that we used when I studied this on the undergraduate level: Spacetime Physics by Taylor and Wheeler.

You should be able to understand most of this book with minimal understanding of calculus.

That said, I'll endeavor to explain this without confusing the issue. I did mention previously (you may want to look at the other post and my response there) that yes, an object's velocity does affect how it experiences time. That said, the difference between how two frames of reference experience time is typically insignificant. I mentioned somewhere (this thread or the other one) that if you traveled in an airplane you'd be younger than someone standing on the surface of Earth. You won't be days or even full seconds younger - you'd have to be in the airplane a "long time" and be going decently fast to even be a full second younger than the Earth observer.

I mention this because you must remember that GPS systems must be extremely precise. This is the same with your computer. Your computer does not have a little atomic clock in it, but there are other clocks that your computer periodically synchronizes with. Your computer and GPS systems do not have little atomic clocks in them, but it is very important to keep these devices in sync with other devices - even more so if the the devices are on a network (and both computers, if you are connected to the internet, and GPS systems are on networks). As an anecdote, when I was working in IT at my University there were some services that would kick a fit if the host computer's system time did not match the synchronized time (i.e. if the host computer was a few minutes, or more, different from the synchronized/network time).

I would like to say that the major cause for the need for periodic synchronization has very, very little to do with relativity and much, much more to do with "lost time" (i.e. increasing error). Every measurement has a margin of error. For an atomic clock this margin of error is 10^-9 seconds. For most of the clocks you purchase at at a store, or the components in a GPS or host computer, the margin of error is several orders of magnitude higher than that. These clocks therefore "lose time" more quickly and need to be synchronized.

Also, you could say that Earth travels around Sun at a given speed and that Sun travels around the galactic core at a given speed. But you must also remember that if Sun is traveling around the galactic center, so is Earth. Think of this as being similar to swinging a ball around on a string and then walking around in a circle in your living room. The ball would have two directions of motion - one around you and the other around the room.

This means that both Earth and Sun, for the purposes of this discussion, can be considered the same frame of reference as the Earth-Sun system travels around the galactic core. This means, again for the purposes of this discussion, that the Earth-Sun system experience time in the same way (since they are both in the same frame of reference).

In a similar way, when you talk about the the galaxy moving through the universe, it is the Earth-Sun-Milky Way system you must consider. Just like we considered both Earth and Sun to be in the same frame of reference, the Earth, Sun, and Milky Way would be in the same frame of reference (at least for the purposes of this discussion).

So although there is no absolute time, remember that some objects are in the same frame of reference with respect to other objects - it depends on what your frame of reference is and what systems you are looking at/your margin of error.

Now there is more to relativity than just speed. There is gravity as well. Time dilation occurs both when an object is in a strong gravitational field and also when it is traveling at a significant fraction of the speed of light in a vacuum (remember that the observed speed of light is not constant in all media). This has actually been observed with the planet Mercury. There was a time when it was theorized that an extra planet, nicknamed Vulcan, had to exist in order for Mercury's orbit to be the way it appeared. This would only have been required with Newtonian motion (an approximation of relativity when applied to slow moving objects, or what we observe here on Earth), but was resolved by relativity. For some more information about this I direct you to Wikipedia's article about Mercury. The section named "Advance of perihelion" includes information about Mercury's orbit and Vulcan. Note that other planets, such as Venus, Earth, and etc. are far enough from Sun that this is not observable in the same way it is with Mercury.

u/Animastryfe · 2 pointsr/Physics

If you want to learn more about special relativity, I suggest you read this textbook. My half semester special relativity class used this book, and I think a highschool student with a good background in classical mechanics should be able to go through most of it.

u/MahatmaGandalf · 2 pointsr/AskPhysics

You sound like a great audience for the series I recommend to everyone in your position: Lenny Susskind's Theoretical Minimum. He's got free lectures and accompanying books which are designed with the sole purpose of getting you from zero to sixty as fast as possible. I'm sure others will have valuable suggestions, but that's mine.

The series is designed for people who took some math classes in college, and maybe an intro physics class, but never had the chance to go further. However, it does assume that you are comfortable with calculus, and more doesn't hurt. What's your math background like?

As to the LHC and other bleeding-edge physics: unfortunately, this stuff takes a lot of investment to really get at, if you want to be at the level where you can do the actual derivations—well beyond where an undergrad quantum course would land you. If you're okay with a more heuristic picture, you could read popular-science books on particle physics and combine that with a more quantitative experience from other sources.

But if you are thinking of doing this over a very long period of time, I would suggest that you could pretty easily attain an advanced-undergraduate understanding of particle physics through self-study—enough to do some calculations, though the actual how and why may not be apparent. If you're willing to put in a little cash and more than a little time for this project, here's what I suggest:

  • Pick up a book on introductory physics (with calculus). It doesn't really matter which. Make sure you're good with the basic concepts—force, momentum, energy, work, etc.

  • Learn special relativity. It does not take too long, and is not math-intensive, but it can be very confusing. There are lots of ways to do it—lots of online sources too. My favorite book for introductory SR is this one.

  • Use a book or online resources to become familiar with the basics (just the basics) of differential equations and linear algebra. It sounds more scary than it is.

  • Get a copy of Griffiths' books on quantum mechanics and particle physics. These are undergrad-level textbooks, but pretty accessible! Read the quantum book first—and do at least a few exercises—and then you should be able to get a whole lot out of reading the particle physics book.

    Note that this is sort of the fastest way to get into particle physics. If you want to take this route, you should still be prepared to spread it out over a couple years—and it will leave a whole smattering of gaps in your knowledge. But hey, if you enjoy it, you could legitimately come to understand a lot about the universe through self-study!
u/mathwanker · 2 pointsr/Physics

Halliday & Resnick would be my recommendation. We used their Physics, Parts 1&2 when I was a student, not their Fundamentals of Physics, which seems to be a different book (and the two books were published simultaneously for a while; I was never sure what the difference was).

If you want individual books, try Kleppner & Kolenkow for mechanics, and Purcell for E&M. Those are often used in honors sections of freshman physics, since the problems tend to be a bit harder. There's also Newtonian Mechanics by A.P. French, which was used for freshman mechanics at MIT for a while (not sure if it still is). French's introductory books on Special Relativity and Quantum Physics are also good. But for relativity my favorite intro-level book is Spacetime Physics by Taylor & Wheeler.

u/ebneter · 2 pointsr/scifi

Any decent introduction to special relativity should cover it. I don't know how technical you are, though. If you're mathematically inclined, Taylor and Wheeler's Spacetime Physics is an awesome book. A lot cheaper and pretty accessible would be Relativity: A Very Short Introduction

u/tikael · 1 pointr/AskPhysics

Looks good.

What textbook are you using? Is your instructor taking a geometrical approach to special relativity or are they going for the algebraic approach (ie, have you spent a lot of time with space-time diagrams or not?). If you aren't using it I highly recommend Spacetime Physics, and if you can't spring $80 for a textbook I'm sure a resourceful person could easily find a pdf somewhere.

u/UltraVioletCatastro · 1 pointr/Physics

You might want to try Taylor and Wheeler it is an introduction to the basics of GR whose math prerequisite is calculus.