Seminars & Colloquia Calendar

Any introductory book on Relativity Theory will tell you of a couple of real-life situations that cannot be explained by Newtonian physics alone, but rather require Einstein's theory. Two very common examples are the precession of Mercury and the functioning of GPS. In this talk I'd like to give an elementary introduction to General Relativity and then apply it to show how GPS works. Unfortunately it turns out GPS really is a complicated thing, so instead I'll show you how GR correctly predicts the orbit of Mercury. Einstein himself considered this as one of the three most important tests of the validity of his theory, so we'd better not fail it. And even though all this may sound like a physics talk, don't worry, it's also math. There's even differential geometry and stuff. (No prerequisite required).