A survey of the most recent developments in general relativity and in the theory of the unification of Fundamental Interactions is presented in this book. The theoretical results, the cosmological and astrophysical aspects, the experimental and observational programs are shown in 26 general talks by renowned scientists active in this field.

This book deals with an original contribution to the hypothetical missing link unifying the two fundamental branches of physics born in the twentieth century, General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. Namely, the book is devoted to a review of a "covariant approach" to Quantum Mechanics, along with several improvements and new results with respect to the previous related literature. The first part of the book deals with a covariant formulation of Galilean Classical Mechanics, which stands as a suitable background for covariant Quantum Mechanics. The second part deals with an introduction to covariant Quantum Mechanics. Further, in order to show how the presented covariant approach works in the framework of standard Classical Mechanics and standard Quantum Mechanics, the third part provides a detailed analysis of the standard Galilean space-time, along with three dynamical classical and quantum examples. The appendix accounts for several non-standard mathematical methods widely used in the body of the book.

Beyond Einstein: Perspectives on Geometry, Gravitation, and Cosmology explores the rich interplay between mathematical and physical ideas by studying the interactions of major actors and the roles of important research communities over the course of the last century.

This volume is dedicated to Jirí Bičák on the occasion of his 60th birthday. The authors are his former students who currently work in the fields of general relativity, astrophysics, theoretical physics and cosmology. Unlike in traditional Festschrifts with many short contributions, they present several comprehensive surveys and elaborate original works. The subjects range from the motion of stars in galactic nuclei to quantum mechanics on a boundary, and include current topics such as cosmological perturbations, effects of a repulsive cosmological constant, discs around black holes and gravitational waves. An unconventional introductory essay revives Prague's inspirations as personified by Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, Christian Doppler, Ernst Mach, Albert Einstein and others.

The four volumes of the proceedings of MG14 give a broad view of all aspects of gravitational physics and astrophysics, from mathematical issues to recent observations and experiments. The scientific program of the meeting included 35 morning plenary talks over 6 days, 6 evening popular talks and 100 parallel sessions on 84 topics over 4 afternoons.Volume A contains plenary and review talks ranging from the mathematical foundations of classical and quantum gravitational theories including recent developments in string theory, to precision tests of general relativity including progress towards the detection of gravitational waves, and from supernova cosmology to relativistic astrophysics, including topics such as gamma ray bursts, black hole physics both in our galaxy and in active galactic nuclei in other galaxies, and neutron star, pulsar and white dwarf astrophysics.The remaining volumes include parallel sessions which touch on dark matter, neutrinos, X-ray sources, astrophysical black holes, neutron stars, white dwarfs, binary systems, radiative transfer, accretion disks, quasars, gamma ray bursts, supernovas, alternative gravitational theories, perturbations of collapsed objects, analog models, black hole thermodynamics, numerical relativity, gravitational lensing, large scale structure, observational cosmology, early universe models and cosmic microwave background anisotropies, inhomogeneous cosmology, inflation, global structure, singularities, chaos, Einstein-Maxwell systems, wormholes, exact solutions of Einstein's equations, gravitational waves, gravitational wave detectors and data analysis, precision gravitational measurements, quantum gravity and loop quantum gravity, quantum cosmology, strings and branes, self-gravitating systems, gamma ray astronomy, cosmic rays and the history of general relativity.

This book provides the reader with a detailed and captivating account of the story where, for the first time, physicists ventured into proposing a new force of nature beyond the four known ones - the electromagnetic, weak and strong forces, and gravitation - based entirely on the reanalysis of existing experimental data. Back in 1986, Ephraim Fischbach, Sam Aronson, Carrick Talmadge and their collaborators proposed a modification of Newton’s Law of universal gravitation. Underlying this proposal were three tantalizing pieces of evidence: 1) an energy dependence of the CP (particle-antiparticle and reflection symmetry) parameters, 2) differences between the measurements of G, the universal gravitational constant, in laboratories and in mineshafts, and 3) a reanalysis of the Eötvos experiment, which had previously been used to show that the gravitational mass of an object and its inertia mass were equal to approximately one part in a billion. The reanalysis revealed that, contrary to Galileo’s position, the force of gravity was in fact very slightly different for different substances. The resulting Fifth Force hypothesis included this composition dependence and also added a small distance dependence to the inverse-square gravitational force. Over the next four years numerous experiments were performed to test the hypothesis. By 1990 there was overwhelming evidence that the Fifth Force, as initially proposed, did not exist. This book discusses how the Fifth Force hypothesis came to be proposed and how it went on to become a showcase of discovery, pursuit and justification in modern physics, prior to its demise. In this new and significantly expanded edition, the material from the first edition is complemented by two essays, one containing Fischbach’s personal reminiscences of the proposal, and a second on the ongoing history and impact of the Fifth Force hypothesis from 1990 to the present.