Dear Cambridge philosophers of science, In view of the strike, the talk by Dennis Lehmkuhl (Caltech/Einstein Papers), ‘The Interpretation of Black Hole Solutions in General Relativity’, will NOT occur at HPS at 1.
Those interested in hearing Dennis discuss such topics might be able to do so nearby at a quasi-CamPoS event at the Eagle pub at 1, however, space permitting. His abstract is below. Sincerely, J. Brian Pitts Abstract: The history and philosophy of physics community has spent decades grappling with the interpretation of the Einstein field equations and its central mathematical object, the metric tensor. However, the community has not endeavoured a detailed study of the solutions to these equations. This is all the more surprising as this is where the meat is in terms of the physics: the confirmation of general relativity through the 1919 observation of light being bent by the sun, as well as the derivation of Mercury’s perihelion, both depend much more on the use of the Schwarzschild solution than on the actual field equations. Indeed, Einstein had not yet found the final version of the field equations when he predicted the perihelion of Mercury. The same is true with respect to the recently discovered black holes and gravitational waves: they are, arguably, tests of particular solutions to the Einstein equations and how these solutions are applied to certain observations. Indeed, what is particularly striking is that all the solutions just mentioned are solutions to the vacuum Einstein equations rather than to the full Einstein equations. This is surprising given that black holes are the most massive objects in the universe, and yet they are adequately represented by solutions to the vacuum field equations. In this talk, I shall discuss the history and the diverse interpretations and applications of the two most important (classes of) solutions: the Schwarzschild solution and the Kerr solution. I will address especially the history of how the free parameters in these solutions were identified as representing the mass, charge and angular momentum of isolated objects, and what kind of coordinate conditions made it possible to apply the solutions in order to represent point particles, stars, and black holes. -- J. Brian Pitts Senior Research Associate Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge [email protected] Ph.D., Philosophy/History & Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Austin _____________________________________________________ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
