Thread 24474538

Very specific request but any recommendations about any books directly about gravity? From Relativity by Einstein himself to modern textbooks to more accessible non fiction

>>24474538 (OP)
>Relativity by Einstein
You believe in Jew magic? You really think there's this all powerful force we can't see, that we don't understand, that controls everything?

>>24474538 (OP)
Gravitation by Thorne/Wheeler. Be warned though, this is a graduate level text which requires some understanding of tensors and non-euclidean geometry

>>24474898
Oh man, come on. That's overkill for everyone except researchers in gravity and people with differential geometry / forms background.

There are two "main" intro textbooks that can be approached more easily.

Schutz: A First Course in General Relativity. This is the one I used when I took the course (back then it was a 2nd edition, I believe there's a 3rd now).
Carroll: Spacetime and Geometry: An Introduction to General Relativity
I avoided this book for a long time because Carroll has a reputation as a pop-science monger, but I've warmed up to it in the past year or two. This was written before he got any traction on his pop writing, and it has some useful bonuses that resonate with me (a chapter on curved space QFT). I'm on the QFT side looking at relativity as a secondary topic, so it's a nice perspective for me. I can't judge how it would be for a beginner because I already knew lots of the topic by the time I opened this book.

Either of those will probably be overkill for you, given your lack of direction in asking the question. It can't really be made easier than that, though. I'd look into one of those (and ignore shit like Leonard Susskind's cheesy, flippant "light novel" books).

And after that initial treatment, yes, you get Gravitation by MTW. It's a treat. Don't read the "classics" on this topic, like Einstein (who was a spook). Relativity developed dramatically over the 20th century, and while the popular problem "paradoxes" were solved early, the language with which the field is presented morphed in such a way that it makes some of those paradoxes vanish. They're artefacts of approaching the topic wrong, if you will. Stick to more modern (1970s and on) books.

I'm rambling and you aren't going to read all of this. If you would like to know more, I'd be glad to help.

that's not what it means because you can still see the text

>>24474538 (OP)
uhhh for fiction you can read “mission of gravity” by hal clement :)

>>24475142
thanks anon, i personally admit i have nothing against very basic popular science and wouldnt mind entry level stuff, like, there are so many books about time in a more conceptual general philosophical sense like
>Oxfords Handbook For Time
>Felt Time
>Time Warped
anything like that for gravity? Spacetime and geometry looks lie what im lookin for

GRAVITY's rainbow - thomas PYNCHon

>>24474538 (OP)
Here you go

As the other guys said, Gravitation is the best if you are pursuing this as a hobby. Technically you don't need to know anything to tackle that book.
Practically, you need to get used to practical tensor manipulation relevant to the subject. The text teaches this. But you'll need extra practice and explanation.
- Try eigenchris' tensor youtube playlist.
- Or the earlier chapters of Gauge Fields, Knots and Gravity by John Baez.
- The gentlest way to learn this is probably A General Relativity Workbook by Thomas Moore.
People tend to either dumb down or mystify this thing too much imo.

My personal experience was it's really not recommended to learn this stuff from mathematical method books. Also not recommended to learn it from math texts like Loring Tu's texts or Klaus Jänich's Vector Analysis. Unnecessary detours imo trying to translate these books to what Gravitation is talking about.

>>24475211
I wonder how Kip Thorne's "Black Holes and Time Warps" is. I read it a long, long time ago before I lost my taste for that kind of popularization, but he is definitely not a phony. Maybe worth checking out?

And oh, oh OH. Roger Penrose's "The Road To Reality". Buy a copy. Don't expect to understand 90% of it. Just read the parts you want. He's wonderful.

>>24475399
Baez's book is also great but that's going to be on the way to mechanical learning (but about as fun as it can get). Since OP wants popular stuff, I think Penrose might be the best of all worlds.

Gravity sucks.

>>24475371
overkill