Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity describes the
effect of gravitation on the shape of space and the flow of time.
But for more than four decades after its publication, the theory
remained largely a curiosity for scientists; however accurate it
seemed, Einstein's mathematical code--represented by six
interlocking equations--was one of the most difficult to crack in
all of science. That is, until a twenty-nine-year-old Cambridge
graduate solved the great riddle in 1963. Roy Kerr's solution
emerged coincidentally with the discovery of black holes that same
year and provided fertile testing ground--at long last--for general
relativity. Today, scientists routinely cite the Kerr solution, but
even among specialists, few know the story of how Kerr cracked
Einstein's code.
Fulvio Melia here offers an eyewitness account of the events
leading up to Kerr's great discovery. "Cracking the Einstein Code
"vividly describes how luminaries such as Karl Schwarzschild, David
Hilbert, and Emmy Noether set the stage for the Kerr solution; how
Kerr came to make his breakthrough; and how scientists such as
Roger Penrose, Kip Thorne, and Stephen Hawking used the
accomplishment to refine and expand modern astronomy and physics.
Today more than 300 million supermassive black holes are suspected
of anchoring their host galaxies across the cosmos, and the Kerr
solution is what astronomers and astrophysicists use to describe
much of their behavior.
By unmasking the history behind the search for a real world
solution to Einstein's field equations, Melia offers a first-hand
account of an important but untold story. Sometimes dramatic, often
exhilarating, but always attuned to the human element, "Cracking
the Einstein Code" is ultimately a showcase of how important
science gets done.
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