Eclipse Theories and Theorists
No Shadow of a Doubt: The 1919 Eclipse that Confirmed Einstein's Theory of Relativity
Today, Einstein's theory is scientific fact. Yet the effort to "weigh light" by measuring the gravitational deflection of starlight during the May 29, 1919 solar eclipse has become clouded by myth and skepticism. Could Arthur Eddington and Frank Dyson have gotten the results they claimed? Did the pacifist Eddington falsify evidence to foster peace after a horrific war by validating the theory of a German antiwar campaigner? In No Shadow of a Doubt, Daniel Kennefick provides definitive answers by offering the most comprehensive and authoritative account of how expedition scientists overcame war, bad weather, and equipment problems to make the experiment a triumphant success.
The Three-Body Problem from Pythagoras to Hawking
The oldest astronomical three-body problem is the question how and when the moon and the sun line up with the earth to produce eclipses. Once the universal gravitation was discovered by Newton, it became immediately a problem to understand why these three-bodies form a stable system, in spite of the pull exerted from one to the other. In fact, it was a big question whether this system is stable at all in the long run. Leading mathematicians attacked this problem over more than two centuries without arriving at a definite answer. The introduction of computers in the last half-a-century has revolutionized the study; now many answers have been found while new questions about the three-body problem have sprung up.
Einstein Was Right: The Science and History of Gravitational Waves
A compelling interdisciplinary account of the historic discovery of gravitational waves. In 1915, Albert Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves—ripples in the fabric of space-time caused by the movement of large masses—as part of the theory of general relativity. A century later, researchers with the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) confirmed Einstein's prediction, detecting gravitational waves generated by the collision of two black holes. Shedding new light on the hundred-year history of this momentous achievement, Einstein Was Right brings together essays by two of the physicists who won the Nobel Prize for their instrumental roles in the discovery, along with contributions by leading scholars who offer unparalleled insights into one of the most significant scientific breakthroughs of our time.
Leonhard Euler and the Foundations of Celestial Mechanics
"The scope of Euler’s research spans the entire range of astronomical problems that were posed by Newton. This includes analysis of orbit perturbations, planetary and comet motion, lunar theory, eclipses, tides, and work on optics, and refinement of lenses for telescopes. It was Euler who first formulated equations of motion of the three-body problem for the Earth–Sun–Moon system in differential form. In his pioneering study of the three-body problem, which Newton did not solve, Euler discovered the collinear equilibrium points in a restricted three-body system, which became of crucial importance for the advancement of space exploration in the twentieth century." -- Preface