Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Symposium Program
- Papers from both Volumes Classified by Subject
- Preface
- Charles W. Misner: Insight and Discovery
- Remarks Concerning the Geometries of Gravity and Gauge Fields
- Gravity and Unification of Fundamental Interactions
- Minisuperspaces: Symmetries and Quantization
- Quantum Cosmology
- A Pictorial History of some Gravitational Instantons
- No Time Machines from Lightlike Sources in 2+1 Gravity
- Inhomogeneity and Anisotropy Generation in FRW Cosmologies
- Misner, Kinks and Black Holes
- The Quantum Mechanics of Closed Systems
- Cosmological Vacuum Phase Transitions
- Minisuperspace as a Quantum Open System
- Ricci Flow on Minisuperspaces and the Geometry-Topology Problem
- Classical and Quantum Dynamics of Black Hole Interiors
- Matter Time in Canonical Quantum Gravity
- The Isotropy and Homogeneity of the Universe
- Recent Advances in ADM Reduction
- Some Progress in Classical Canonical Gravity
- Harmonic Map Formulation of Colliding Electrovac Plane Waves
- Geometry, the Renormalization Group and Gravity
- An Example of Indeterminacy in the Time-Development of “Already Unified Field Theory”: A Collision between Electomagnetic Plane Waves
- Non-static Metrics of Hiscock-Gott Type
- Non-Standard Phase Space Variables, Quantization and Path-Integrals, or Little Ado about Much
- The Present Status of the Decaying Neutrino Theory
- Exploiting the Computer to Investigate Black Holes and Cosmic Censorship
- Misner Space as a Prototype for Almost Any Pathology
- Relativity and Rotation
- The First Law of Black Hole Mechanics
- Gravitational Radiation Antenna Observations
- The Back-Reaction is Never Negligible: Entropy of Black Holes and Radiation
- Toward a Thesis Topic
- Charles Misner: A Celebration of Memories
- Curriculum Vitae of C. W. Misner
- Ph. D. Theses supervised by C. W. Misner
- List of Publications of C. W. Misner
Gravity and Unification of Fundamental Interactions
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 February 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Symposium Program
- Papers from both Volumes Classified by Subject
- Preface
- Charles W. Misner: Insight and Discovery
- Remarks Concerning the Geometries of Gravity and Gauge Fields
- Gravity and Unification of Fundamental Interactions
- Minisuperspaces: Symmetries and Quantization
- Quantum Cosmology
- A Pictorial History of some Gravitational Instantons
- No Time Machines from Lightlike Sources in 2+1 Gravity
- Inhomogeneity and Anisotropy Generation in FRW Cosmologies
- Misner, Kinks and Black Holes
- The Quantum Mechanics of Closed Systems
- Cosmological Vacuum Phase Transitions
- Minisuperspace as a Quantum Open System
- Ricci Flow on Minisuperspaces and the Geometry-Topology Problem
- Classical and Quantum Dynamics of Black Hole Interiors
- Matter Time in Canonical Quantum Gravity
- The Isotropy and Homogeneity of the Universe
- Recent Advances in ADM Reduction
- Some Progress in Classical Canonical Gravity
- Harmonic Map Formulation of Colliding Electrovac Plane Waves
- Geometry, the Renormalization Group and Gravity
- An Example of Indeterminacy in the Time-Development of “Already Unified Field Theory”: A Collision between Electomagnetic Plane Waves
- Non-static Metrics of Hiscock-Gott Type
- Non-Standard Phase Space Variables, Quantization and Path-Integrals, or Little Ado about Much
- The Present Status of the Decaying Neutrino Theory
- Exploiting the Computer to Investigate Black Holes and Cosmic Censorship
- Misner Space as a Prototype for Almost Any Pathology
- Relativity and Rotation
- The First Law of Black Hole Mechanics
- Gravitational Radiation Antenna Observations
- The Back-Reaction is Never Negligible: Entropy of Black Holes and Radiation
- Toward a Thesis Topic
- Charles Misner: A Celebration of Memories
- Curriculum Vitae of C. W. Misner
- Ph. D. Theses supervised by C. W. Misner
- List of Publications of C. W. Misner
Summary
It is a pleasure to contribute this paper in honor of Charlie Misner for his many contributions to gravitational theory and for his warm friendship.
INTRODUCTION
The discovery of general relativity by Einstein and its early experimental verification excited at that time both the scientific and lay public alike. However, during the 1930s and 1940s the hope that gravity would be a unifying principle of nature faded. The discovery of the self-energy infinities of Lorentz covariant quantum field theory indicated the insufficiency of the quantum theoretical framework. Subsequently, it was realized that these infinities were even more virilant in the non-renormalizable general relativity. Most significant was the experimental discovery during this period of the weak and strong interactions, implying that the original ideas of Einstein and Weyl to unify gravity with electromagnetism were premature. Perhaps the one idea from this era that has remained in present day efforts to unify interactions was the most radical: the suggestion by Kaluza and Klein that there might exist additional compactified dimensions in space-time. Most remarkable was the work of Oscar Klein who, using dimensional reduction, discovered non-abelian gauge theory and applied it to construct a precursor of present day electro-weak theory. This was a spectacular theoretical tour-de-force which unfortunately did not appear to stimulate further work at that time.
The development of the Glashow-Weinberg-Salam model of electro weak interactions combined with the QCD theory of strong interactions to form the Standard Model, has led to the recent approaches to build models of unified interactions.
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- Directions in General RelativityProceedings of the 1993 International Symposium, Maryland: Papers in Honor of Charles Misner, pp. 21 - 28Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1993