The Geometry of Spacetime

This graduate-level, course-based text is devoted to the 3+1 formalism of general relativity, which also constitutes the theoretical foundations of numerical relativity.

A world-renowned astrophysicist takes us through the huge, unfolding history of the universeThe night sky is an endless source of wonder and mystery. For thousands of years it has been at the heart of scientific and philosophical inquiry, from the first star catalogues etched into ancient Mesopotamian clay tablets to the metres-wide telescopes constructed in Chile's Atacama Desert today.

This book examines the geometrical notion of orthogonality, and shows how to use it as the primitive concept on which to base a metric structure in affine geometry. The subject has a long history, and an extensive literature, but whatever novelty there may be in the study presented here comes from its focus on geometries hav­ ing lines that are self-orthogonal, or even singular (orthogonal to all lines). The most significant examples concern four-dimensional special-relativistic spacetime (Minkowskian geometry), and its var­ ious sub-geometries, and these will be prominent throughout. But the project is intended as an exercise in the foundations of geome­ try that does not presume a knowledge of physics, and so, in order to provide the appropriate intuitive background, an initial chapter has been included that gives a description of the different types of line (timelike, spacelike, lightlike) that occur in spacetime, and the physical meaning of the orthogonality relations that hold between them. The coordinatisation of affine spaces makes use of constructions from projective geometry, including standard results about the ma­ trix represent ability of certain projective transformations (involu­ tions, polarities). I have tried to make the work sufficiently self­ contained that it may be used as the basis for a course at the ad­ vanced undergraduate level, assuming only an elementary knowledge of linear and abstract algebra.