NEW hardcover

Reinventing Gravity: A Physicist Goes Beyond Einstein Moffat, John W

Einsteins gravity theoryhis general theory of relativityhas served as the basis for a series of astonishing cosmological discoveries But what if, nonetheless, Einstein got it wrong?Since the 1930s, physicists have noticed an alarming discrepancy between the universe as we see it and the universe that Einsteins theory of relativity predicts There just doesnt seem to be enough stuff out there for everything to hang together Galaxies spin so fast that, based on the amount of visible matter in them, they ought to be flung to pieces, the same way a spinning yoyo can break its string Cosmologists tried to solve the problem by positing dark mattera mysterious, invisible substance that surrounds galaxies, holding the visible matter in placeand particle physicists, attempting to identify the nature of the stuff, have undertaken a slew of experiments to detect it So far, none haveNow, John W Moffat, a physicist at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada, offers a different solution to the problem The capstone to a storybook careerone that began with a correspondence with Einstein and a conversation with Niels BohrMoffats modified gravity theory, or MOG, can model the movements of the universe without recourse to dark matter, and his work challenging the constancy of the speed of light raises a stark challenge to the usual models of the first halfmillion years of the universes existenceThis bold new work, presenting the entirety of Moffats hypothesis to a general readership for the first time, promises to overturn everything we thought we knew about the origins and evolution of the universe