"solutions of Exercises of General Relativity Simplified & Assessed"

The thesis tackles two distinct problems of great interest in gravitational mechanics — one relativistic and one Newtonian. The relativistic one is concerned with the "first law of binary mechanics", a remarkably simple variational relation that plays a crucial role in the modern understanding of the gravitational two-body problem, thereby contributing to the effort to detect gravitational-wave signals from binary systems of black holes and neutron stars. The work reported in the thesis provides a mathematically elegant extension of previous results to compact objects that carry spin angular momentum and quadrupolar deformations, which more accurately represent astrophysical bodies than mere point particles.

In 1997, contrary to the ruling paradigm which was that of a dark matter filled, decelerating universe, my work pointed to a dark energy driven accelerating universe with a small cosmological constant. Moreover, the many supposedly accidental Large Number relations in cosmology, including the mysterious Weinberg formula were now deduced from the theory. Observational confirmation for this scenario came in 1998, while dark energy itself was finally reconfirmed in 2003, thanks to the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

This concise book reviews methods used for gluing space-time manifolds together. It is therefore relevant to theorists working on branes, walls, domain walls, concepts frequently used in theoretical cosmology, astrophysics, and gravity theory. Nowadays, applications are also in theoretical condensed matter physics where Riemannian geometry appears. The book also reviews the history of matching conditions between two space-time manifolds from the early times of general relativity up to now.

This book seeks to present a new way of thinking about the interaction of gravitational fields with quantum systems. Despite the massive amounts of research and experimentation, the myriad meetings, seminars and conferences, all of the articles, treatises and books, and the seemingly endless theorization, quantization and just plain speculation that have been engaged in regarding our evolving understanding of the quantum world, that world remains an enigma, even to the experts.

The current volume of the Parmenides Series “On Thinking” addresses our deepest and most personal experience of the world, the experience of “the present,” from a modern perspective combining physics and philosophy. Many prominent researchers have contributed articles to the volume, in which they present models and express their opinions on and, in some cases, also their skepticism about the subject and how it may be (or may not be) addressed, as well as which aspects they consider most relevant in this context.