and fun challenges about gravitation 141 What is weight? 146 Why do apples fall?

l? 147 A summary: the implications of the invariant speed of light on gravitation 148 149 6 Open orbits, bent light and wobbling vacuum Weak fields 149 The Thirring effects 150 Gravitomagnetism 151 Gravitational waves 155 Production and detection of gravitational waves 159 Bending of light and radio waves 163 Time delay 165 Relativistic effects on orbits 165 The geodesic effect 168 Curiosities and fun challenges about weak fields 169 A summary on orbits and waves 171 172 7 From curvature to motion How to measure curvature in two dimensions 172 Three dimensions: curvature of space 174 Curvature in space-time 176 Average curvature andmotion in general relativity 178 Universal gravity 179 The Schwarzschildmetric 180 Curiosities and fun challenges about curvature 180 Three-dimensional curvature: the Ricci tensor 181 Average curvature: the Ricci scalar 181 The Einstein tensor 182 The description of momentum, mass and energy 182 Einsteins field equations 184 Universal gravitation again 186 Understanding the field equations 186 Hilberts action how do things fall? 187 The symmetries of general relativity 188 Mass in general relativity 188 The force limit and the cosmological constant 189 Is gravity an interaction? 190 Howto calculate the shape of geodesics 191 Riemann gymnastics 192 Curiosities and fun challenges about general relativity 194 A summary of the field equations 195 196 8 Why can we see the stars? Motion in the universe Which stars do we see? 196 What do we see at night? 199 What is the universe? 206 The colour and the motion of the stars 208 Do stars shine every night? 211 A short history of the universe 212 The history of space-time 217 Why is the sky darkatnight? 222 The colour variations of the night sky 224 Is the universe open, closed or marginal? 225 Why is the universe transparent? 226 The big bang and its consequences 227 Was the big bang a big bang? 228 Was the big bang an event? 228 Was the big bang a beginning? 228 Does the big bang imply creation? 229 Why can we see the Sun? 230 Why do the colours of the stars differ? 231 Are there dark stars? 232 Are all stars different? Gravitational lenses 233 What is the shape of the universe? 235 What is behind the horizon? 236 Why are there stars all over the place? Inflation 236 Why are there so few stars? The energy and entropy content of the universe 237 Why ismatter lumped? 238 Why are stars so small compared with the universe? 238 Are stars and galaxies moving apart or is the universe expanding? 238 Is there more than one universe? 239 Why are the stars fixed? Arms, stars andMachs principle 239 At rest in the universe 240 Does light attract light? 241 Does light decay? 241 Summary on cosmology 242 243 9 Black holes falling forever Why explore black holes? 243 Mass concentration and horizons 243 Black hole horizons as limit surfaces 247 Orbits around black holes 247 Black holes have no hair 250 Black holes as energy sources 252 Formation of and search for black holes 254 Singularities 255 Curiosities and fun challenges about black holes 256 Summary on black holes 259 A quiz is the universe a black hole? 259
Motion Mountain The Adventure of Physics pdf file available free of charge at www.motionmountain.net Copyright Christoph Schiller June 1990 May 2013

contents 13 10 Does space differ from time? Can space and time be measured? 263 Are space and time necessary? 264 Do closed timelike curves exist? 264 Is general relativity local? The hole argument 264 Is the Earth hollow? 266 A summary: are space, time and mass independent? 267 268 11 General relativity in a nutshell a summary for the layman

The accuracy of the description 269 Research in general relativity and cosmology 271 Could general relativity be different? 272 The limits of general relativity 273 275 a Units, measurements and constants SI units 275 The meaning of measurement 278 Curiosities and fun challenges about units 278 Precision and accuracy of measurements 280 Limits to precision 281 Physical constants 282 Useful numbers 289 290 Challenge hints and solutions 299 Bibliography 326 Credits Film credits 327 Image credits 327
Motion Mountain The Adventure of Physics pdf file available free of charge at www.moti

Relativity

In our quest to learn how things move, the experience of hiking and other motion leads us to discover that there is a maximum speed in nature, and that two events that happen at the same time for one observer may not for another. We discover that empty space can bend, wobble and move, we find that there is a maximum force in nature, and we understand why we can see the stars

REST, AND MOTION OF

LIGHT

Fama nihil est celerius.* Antiquity

ight is indispensable for a precise description of motion. To check whether a

ine or a path of motion is straight, we must look along it. In other words, we use ight to define straightness. How do we decide whether a plane is flat? We look across it,** again using light. How do we observemotion? With light. How do wemeasure length to high precision? With light. How do we measure time to high precision? With light: once it was light fromthe Sun thatwas used; nowadays it is light fromcaesium Page 275 atoms. Light is important because it is the standard for undisturbed motion. Physics would have evolved much more rapidly if, at some earlier time, light propagation had been recognized as the ideal example of motion. But is light really a phenomenon of motion? Yes.This was already known in ancient Greece, from a simple daily phenomenon, the shadow. Shadows prove that light is amoving entity, emanating from the light source, and moving in straight lines.*** The Greek Ref. 1 thinker Empedocles (c. 490 to c. 430 bce) drew the logical conclusion that light takes a certain amount of time to travel from the source to the surface showing the shadow. Empedocles thus stated that the speed of light is finite.We can confirm this result with a different, equally simple, but subtle argument. Speed can be measured. And measurement is comparison with a standard. Therefore the perfect speed, which is used as the implicit measurement standard, must have a finite value. An infinite velocity standard
* Nothing is faster than rumour. This common sentence is a simplified version of Virgils phrase: fama,

malum qua non aliud velocius ullum. Rumour, the evil faster than all. From the Aeneid, book IV, verses 173
and 174. ** Note that looking along the plane from all sides is not sufficient for this check: a surface that a light beam touches right along its length in all directions does not need to be flat. Can you give an example? One needs Challenge 2 s other methods to check flatness with light. Can you specify one? ***Whenever a source produces shadows, the emitted entities are called rays or radiation. Apart fromlight, other examples of radiation discovered through shadows were infrared rays and ultraviolet rays, which emanate from most light sources together with visible light, and cathode rays, which were found to be to the motion of a new particle, the electron. Shadows also led to the discovery of X-rays, which again turned out to be a version of light, with high frequency. Channel rays were also discovered via their shadows; they turn out to be travelling ionized atoms. The three types of radioactivity, namely -rays (helium nuclei), -rays (again electrons), and -rays (high-energy X-rays) also produce shadows. All these discoveries were made between 1890 and 1910: those were the ray days of physics.
Motion Mountain The Adventure of Physics pdf file available free of charge at www.motionmountain.net Copyright Christoph Schiller June 1990 May 2013

16would not Challenge 3 s allow measurements at all. In nature, lighter entities tend to move with higher

speed. Light, which is indeed extremely light, is an obvious candidate for motion with perfect but finite speed.We will confirm this in a minute. A finite speed of light means that whatever we see is a message from the past. When we see the stars,* the Sun or a person we love, we always see an image of the past. In a sense, nature prevents us from enjoying the present we must therefore learn to enjoy the past. The speed of light is high; therefore it was not measured until the years 1668 to 1676, even though many, including Galileo, had tried to do so earlier. The first measurement
*The photograph of the night sky and the MilkyWay, on page 14 is copyright Anthony Ayiomamitis and is found on his splendid website www.perseus.gr.
Motion Mountain The Adventure of Physics pdf file available free of charge at www.motionmountain.net Copyright Christoph Schiller June 1990May 2013

motion of

light 17
rain light rain's perspective light's perspective winds perspective walkers perspective human perspective
Sun

Sun
Earth

wind
windsurfer

windsurfers perspective

c c c c c c

FIGURE 4 The rainwalkers or windsurfers method of measuring the speed of light. Ref. 2 method was worked out and published by the Danish astronomer Ole Vol. I, page 184 he

Romer* when was studying the orbits of Io and the other Galilean satellites of Jupiter. He did not obtain any specific value for the speed of light because he had no reliable value for the satellites distance from Earth and because his timingmeasurements were imprecise.The

Ref. 3 lack

of a numerical result was quickly corrected by his peers,mainly Christiaan Huygens Edmund Halley. (You might try to deduce Romers method from Figure 3.) Since Romers time it has been known that light takes a bit more than 8 minutes to travel from the Sun to the Earth.This result was confirmed in a beautiful way fifty years later, in 1726, Vol. I, page 138 by the astronomer James Bradley. Being English, Bradley thought of the rain method to Ref. 4 measure the speed of light. How can we measure the speed of falling rain? We walk rapidly with an umbrella, measure the angle at which the rain appears to fall, and thenmeasure our own velocity . (We can clearly see the angle while walking if we look at the rain to our left or right, if possible against a dark background.) As shown in Figure 4, the speed c of the rain is
Challenge 4 s and

* Ole (Olaf) Rmer (1644 Aarhus 1710 Copenhagen), Danish astronomer. He was the teacher of the Dauphin in Paris, at the time of Louis XIV.The idea of measuring the speed of light in this way was due to the Italian astronomer Giovanni Cassini, whose assistant Rmer had been. Rmer continued his measurements until 1681, when Rmer had to leave France, like all protestants (such as Christiaan Huygens), so that his work was interrupted. Back in Denmark, a fire destroyed all his measurement notes. As a result, he was not able to continue improving the precision of his method. Later he became an important administrator and reformer of the Danish state.
Motion Mountain The Adventure of Physics pdf file available free of charge at www.motionmountain.net Copyright Christoph Schiller June 1990 May 2013

18motion of light 17
rain light rain's perspective light's perspective winds perspective walkers perspective human perspective
Sun

Sun
Earth

wind
windsurfer

windsurfers perspective

c c c c c c

FIGURE 4 The rainwalkers or windsurfers method of measuring the speed of light. Ref. 2 method was worked out and published by the Danish astronomer Ole

Romer* when Vol. I, page 184 he was studying the orbits of Io and the other Galilean satellites of Jupiter. He did not obtain any specific value for the speed of light because he had no reliable value for the satellites distance from Earth and because his timingmeasurements were imprecise.The Ref. 3 lack of a numerical result was quickly corrected by his peers,mainly Christiaan Huygens Challenge 4 s and Edmund Halley. (You might try to deduce Romers method from Figure 3.) Since Romers time it has been known that light takes a bit more than 8 minutes to travel from the Sun to the Earth.This result was confirmed in a beautiful way fifty years later, in 1726, Vol. I, page 138 by the astronomer James Bradley. Being English, Bradley thought of the rain method to Ref. 4 measure the speed of light. How can we measure the speed of falling rain? We walk rapidly with an umbrella, measure the angle at which the rain appears to fall, and thenmeasure our own velocity

. (We can clearly see the angle while walking if we look at the rain to our left or right, if possible against a dark background.) As shown in Figure 4, the speed c of the rain is
* Ole (Olaf) Rmer (1644 Aarhus 1710 Copenhagen), Danish astronomer. He was the teacher of the Dauphin in Paris, at the time of Louis XIV.The idea of measuring the speed of light in this way was due to the Italian astronomer Giovanni Cassini, whose assistant Rmer had been. Rmer continued his measurements until 1681, when Rmer had to leave France, like all protestants (such as Christiaan Huygens), so that his work was interrupted. Back in Denmark, a fire destroyed all his measurement notes. As a result, he was not able to continue improving the precision of his method. Later he became an important administrator and reformer of the Danish state.
Motion Mountain The Adventure of Physics pdf file available free of charge at www.motionmountain.net Copyright Christoph Schiller June 1990 May 2013

18then given (approximately) by

c = /tan . (1)
In the same way we can measure the speed of wind when on a surfboard or on a ship. The same measurement can be made for light. Figure 4 shows that we just need to measure the angle between the motion of the Earth and the light coming from a star above Earths orbit. Because the Earth is moving relative to the Sun and thus to the star, the angle is not 90. This deviation is called the aberration of light; the aberration is determinedmost easily by comparingmeasurementsmade six months apart.The value of the aberration angle is 20.5 . (Nowadays it can be measured with a precision of five decimal digits.) Given that the speed of the Earth around the Sun is = 2R/T = 29.7 km/s, the speed of light must therefore be c = 0.300Gm/s.* This is an astonishing value, especially when compared with the highest speed ever achieved by a man-made object, namely the Voyager satellites, which travel away from us at 52Mm/h = 14 km/s, with the growth of children, about 3 nm/s, or with the growth of stalagmites in caves, about 0.3 pm/s. We begin to realize why measurement of the speed of light is a science in its own right. The first precise measurement of the speed of light was made in 1849 by the French physicist Hippolyte Fizeau (18191896). His value was only 5% greater than the modern one. He sent a beam of light towards a distant mirror and measured the time the light took to come back. How did Fizeaumeasure the time without any electric device? In fact, Vol. I, page 58 he used the same ideas that are used to measure bullet speeds; part of the answer is given Challenge 9 s in Figure 5. (How far away does the mirror have to be?) A modern reconstruction of Ref. 7 his experiment by Jan Frercks has achieved a precision of 2%. Today, the experiment is
* Umbrellas were not common in Britain in 1726; they became fashionable later, after being introduced from China. The umbrella part of the story is made up. In reality, Bradley had his idea while sailing on the Thames, when he noted that on a moving ship the apparent wind has a different direction from that on land. He had observed 50 stars for many years, notably Gamma Draconis, and during that time he had been puzzled by the sign of the aberration, which was opposite to the effect he was looking for, namely that of the star parallax. Both the parallax and the aberration for a star above the ecliptic make them describe a Challenge 5 s small ellipse in the course of an Earth year, though with different orientations. Can you see why? Challenge 6 s By the way, the correct formula (1) is c = /(tan 1 2/c2 ).Why? To determine the speed of the Earth, we first have to determine its distance from the Sun. The simplest method is the one by the Greek thinker Aristarchus of Samos ( c. 310 to c. 230 bce). We measure the angle between theMoon and the Sun at the moment when theMoon is precisely half full.The cosine of that angle Vol. I, page 154 gives the ratio between the distance to the Moon (determined as explained earlier on) and the distance to Challenge 7 s the Sun.The explanation is left as a puzzle for the reader. The angle in question is almost a right angle (which would yield an infinite distance), and good instru Ref. 5 ments are needed to measure it with precision, as Hipparchus noted in an extensive discussion of the problem around 130 bce. Precisemeasurement of the angle became possible only in the late seventeenth century, when it was found to be 89.86, giving a distance ratio of about 400. Today, thanks to radar measurements Page 288 of planets, the distance to the Sun is known with the incredible precision of 30 metres. Moon distance variChallenge 8 s ations can even be measured to the nearest centimetre; can you guess how this is achieved? Ref. 6 Aristarchus also determined the radius of the Sun and of the Moon as multiples of those of the Earth. Aristarchus was a remarkable thinker: he was the first to propose the heliocentric system, and perhaps the first to propose that stars were other, faraway suns. For these ideas, several of his contemporaries proposed

that he should be condemned to death for impiety.When the Polishmonk and astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (14731543) again proposed the heliocentric system two thousand years later, he did not mention Aristarchus, even though he got the idea from him.

2013then given (approximately) by c = /tan . (1) In the same way we can measure the speed of wind when on a surfboard or on a ship. The same measurement can be made for light. Figure 4 shows that we just need to measure the angle between the motion of the Earth and the light coming from a star above Earths orbit. Because the Earth is moving relative to the Sun and thus to the star, the angle is not 90. This deviation is called the aberration of light; the aberration is determinedmost easily by comparingmeasurementsmade six months apart.The value of the aberration angle is 20.5 . (Nowadays it can be measured with a precision of five decimal digits.) Given that the speed of the Earth around the Sun is = 2R/T = 29.7 km/s, the speed of light must therefore be c = 0.300Gm/s.* This is an astonishing value, especially when compared with the highest speed ever achieved by a man-made object, namely the Voyager satellites, which travel away from us at 52Mm/h = 14 km/s, with the growth of children, about 3 nm/s, or with the growth of stalagmites in caves, about 0.3 pm/s. We begin to realize why measurement of the speed of light is a science in its own right. The first precise measurement of the speed of light was made in 1849 by the French physicist Hippolyte Fizeau (18191896). His value was only 5% greater than the modern one. He sent a beam of light towards a distant mirror and measured the time the light took to come back. How did Fizeaumeasure the time without any electric device? In fact, Vol. I, page 58 he used the same ideas that are used to measure bullet speeds; part of the answer is given Challenge 9 s in Figure 5. (How far away does the mirror have to be?) A modern reconstruction of Ref. 7 his experiment by Jan Frercks has achieved a precision of 2%. Today, the experiment is
Motion Mountain The Adventure of Physics pdf file available free of charge at www.motionmountain.net Copyright Christoph Schiller June 1990 May

* Umbrellas were not common in Britain in 1726; they became fashionable later, after being introduced from China. The umbrella part of the story is made up. In reality, Bradley had his idea while sailing on the Thames, when he noted that on a moving ship the apparent wind has a different direction from that on land. He had observed 50 stars for many years, notably Gamma Draconis, and during that time he had been puzzled by the sign of the aberration, which was opposite to the effect he was looking for, namely that of the star parallax. Both the parallax and the aberration for a star above the ecliptic make them describe a Challenge 5 s small ellipse in the course of an Earth year, though with different orientations. Can you see why? Challenge 6 s By the way, the correct formula (1) is c = /(tan 1 2/c2 ).Why? To determine the speed of the Earth, we first have to determine its distance from the Sun. The simplest method is the one by the Greek thinker Aristarchus of Samos ( c. 310 to c. 230 bce). We measure the angle between theMoon and the Sun at the moment when theMoon is precisely half full.The cosine of that angle Vol. I, page 154 gives the ratio between the distance to the Moon (determined as explained earlier on) and the distance to Challenge 7 s the Sun.The explanation is left as a puzzle for the reader. The angle in question is almost a right angle (which would yield an infinite distance), and good instru Ref. 5 ments are needed to measure it with precision, as Hipparchus noted in an extensive discussion of the problem around 130 bce. Precisemeasurement of the angle became possible only in the late seventeenth century, when it was found to be 89.86, giving a distance ratio of about 400. Today, thanks to radar measurements Page 288 of planets, the distance to the Sun is known with the incredible precision of 30 metres. Moon distance variChallenge 8 s ations can even be measured to the nearest centimetre; can you guess how this is achieved? Ref. 6 Aristarchus also determined the radius of the Sun and of the Moon as multiples of those of the Earth. Aristarchus was a remarkable thinker: he was the first to propose the heliocentric system, and perhaps the first to propose that stars were other, faraway suns. For these ideas, several of his contemporaries proposed that he should be condemned to death for impiety.When the Polishmonk and astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (14731543) again proposed the heliocentric system two thousand years later, he did not mention Aristarchus, even though he got the idea from him.
Motion Mountain The Adventure of Physics pdf file available free of charge at www.motionmountain.net Copyright Christoph Schiller June 1990 May 2013

motion of

light 19

light source mirror half-silvered mirror large distance FIGURE 5 Fizeaus set-up to measure the speed of light (photo AG Didaktik und Geschichte der Physik, Universitt Oldenburg). path of light pulse 10 mm red shutter switch beam FIGURE 6 A photograph of a green light pulse moving from right to left through a bottle with milky water, marked in millimetres (photograph Tom Mattick).

much simpler; in the chapters on electrodynamics we will discover how to measure the speed of light using two standard UNIX or Linux computers connected by a cable, using Vol. III, page 30 the ping command. The speed of light is so high that it is even difficult to prove that it is finite. Perhaps the most beautiful way to prove this is to photograph a light pulse flying across ones field of view, in the same way as one can photograph a car driving by or a bullet flying Ref. 8 through the air. Figure 6 shows the first such photograph, produced in 1971 with a standard off-the-shelf reflex camera, a very fast shutter invented by the photographers, and, most noteworthy, not a single piece of electronic equipment. (How fast does such a shutChallenge 10 s ter have to be? How would you build such a shutter? And how would you make sure it opened at the right instant?) A finite speed of light also implies that a rapidly rotating light beam bends, as shown
Motion Mountain The Adventure of Physics pdf file available free of charge at www.motionmountain.net Copyright Christoph Schiller June 1990 May 2013

motion of

light 19
light source mirror half-silvered mirror large distance FIGURE 5 Fizeaus set-up to measure the speed of light (photo AG Didaktik und Geschichte der Physik, Universitt Oldenburg). path of light pulse 10 mm red shutter switch beam FIGURE 6 A photograph of a green light pulse moving from right to left through a bottle with milky water, marked in millimetres (photograph Tom Mattick).

much simpler; in the chapters on electrodynamics we will discover how to measure the speed of light using two standard UNIX or Linux computers connected by a cable, using Vol. III, page 30 the ping command. The speed of light is so high that it is even difficult to prove that it is finite. Perhaps the most beautiful way to prove this is to photograph a light pulse flying across ones field of view, in the same way as one can photograph a car driving by or a bullet flying Ref. 8 through the air. Figure 6 shows the first such photograph, produced in 1971 with a standard off-the-shelf reflex camera, a very fast shutter invented by the photographers, and, most noteworthy, not a single piece of electronic equipment. (How fast does such a shutChallenge 10 s ter have to be? How would you build such a shutter? And how would you make sure it

opened at the right instant?) A finite speed of light also implies that a rapidly rotating light beam bends, as shown
Motion Mountain The Adventure of Physics pdf file available free of charge at www.motionmountain.net Copyright Christoph Schiller June 1990 May

onmountain.net Copyright Christoph Schiller June 1990May 2013O b s e rvat i o n s a b o u t l i g h t Light can move through vacuum. Light transports energy. Light has momentum: it can hit bodies. Light has angular momentum: it can rotate bodies. Light moves across other light undisturbed. Light in vacuum always moves faster than any material body does. The speed of light, its true signal speed, is the forerunner speed. Vol. III, page 119 In vacuum, the speed of light is 299 792 458m/s (or roughly 30 cm/ns). The proper speed of light is infinite. Page 45 Shadows can move without any speed limit. Light moves in a straight line when far from matter. High-intensity light is a wave. Light beams are approximations when the wavelength is neglected. In matter, both the forerunner speed and the energy speed of light are lower than in vacuum. In matter, the group velocity of light pulses can be zero, positive, negative or infinite.
2013

as in Figure 7. In everyday life, the high speed of light and the slow rotation of lighthouses make the effect barely noticeable. In short, light moves extremely rapidly. It is much faster than lightning, as you might Challenge 11 s like to check yourself. A century of increasingly precise measurements of the speed have culminated in the modern value c = 299 792 458m/s. (2) In fact, this value has now been fixed exactly, by definition, and the metre has been defined in terms of c. An approximate value for c is thus 0.3Gm/s or 30cm/ns. Table 1 gives a summary of what is known today about the motion of light. Two of the most surprising properties were discovered in the late nineteenth century. They form the basis of
Motion Mountain The Adventure of Physics pdf file available free of charge at www.motionmountain.net Copyright Christoph Schiller June 1990 May 2013

motion