Relativity theory has become one of the icons of Twentieth Century science. It's reckoned to be a difficult subject, taught as a layered series of increasingly difficult mathematics and increasingly abstract concepts. We're told that relativity theory is supposed to be this complicated and counter-intuitive. But how much of this historical complexity is really necessary? Can we bypass the interpretations and paradoxes and pseudoparadoxes of Einstein's special theory and jump directly to a deeper and more intuitive description of reality? What if curvature is a fundamental part of physics, and a final theory of relativity shouldn't reduce to Einstein's "flat" 1905 theory //on principle//? "Relativity..." takes us on a whistlestop tour of Twentieth Century physics - from black holes, quantum mechanics, wormholes and the Big Bang to the workings of the human mind, and asks: what would physics look like without special relativity? 394 printed pages, 234×156 mm, ~200 figures and illustrations, includes bibliography and index www.relativitybook.com
Eric Baird specialises in niche areas of science at the edge of established knowledge.
After starting out in audio synthesiser and software design, he then started one of the more popular relativity websites in the 1990's, and has contributed to theoretical work on warp drive theory, wormholes, classical Hawking radiation, next-generation relativity theory and "atomistic" fractals, and has so far written two books: "Relativity in Curved Spacetime" (ISBN 0955706807), and "Alt.Fractals: A visual guide to fractal geometry and design" (ISBN 0955706831).
He enjoys coffee, unconventional geometry, noticing things that other people have missed, improbable coincidences, and watching the catastrophic breakdown of complex systems. He does not have a cat, and is not the author of a series of books on horses. His personal blog is at http://erkdemon.blogspot.com/ .
