By César Augusto Zen Vasconcellos (ed.)
World Scientific
In 1915 Albert Einstein presented to the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences his theory of general relativity (GR), which represented a breakthrough in modern physics and became the foundation of our understanding of the universe at large. A century later, this elegant theory is still the basis of the current description of gravitation and a number of predictions derived from it have been confirmed in observations and experiments – most recently with the direct detection of gravitational waves.
This book celebrates the centenary of GR with a collection of 11 essays by different experts, which offer an overview of the theory and its numerous astrophysical and cosmological implications. After an introduction to GR, the Tolman–Oppenheimer–Volkoff equations describing the structure of relativistic compact stars are derived and their extension to deformed compact stellar objects presented. The book then moves to the so-called pc-GR theory, in which GR is algebraically extended to pseudo-complex co-ordinates in an attempt to get around singularities. Other topics covered are strange matter, in particular a conjecture that pulsar-like compact stars may be made of a condensed three-flavour quark state, and the use of a particular solution of the GR equations to construct multiple non-spherical cosmic structures.
Keeping the book contemporary, it also gives an overview of the most recent experimental results in particle physics and cosmology. Several contributions are devoted to the search for physics beyond the Standard Model at CERN, studies of cosmic objects and phenomena through gamma-ray lenses and, finally, to the recent detection of gravitational waves by the LIGO experiment.
