S383 Special Relativity And Spacetime The Open University by The Open University instant download after payment.

On the cosmic scale, gravitation dominates the universe. Nuclear and electromagnetic forces account for the detailed processes that allow stars to shine and astronomers to see them. But it is gravitation that shapes the universe, determining the geometry of space and time and thus the large-scale distribution of galaxies. Providing insight into gravitation – its effects, its nature and its causes – is therefore rightly seen as one of the most important goals of physics and astronomy.

Through more than a thousand years of human history the common explanation of gravitation was based on the Aristotelian belief that objects had a natural place in an Earth-centred universe that they would seek out if free to do so. For about two and a half centuries the Newtonian idea of gravity as a force held sway. Then, in the twentieth century, came Einstein’s conception of gravity as a manifestation o