AST-461beginner

General Relativity & Curved Spacetime: Foundations

General relativity describes gravity through the curvature of spacetime produced by matter, energy, momentum, and pressure. The theory is required for black holes, neutron-star mergers, precision satellite timing, gravitational lensing, cosmology, and high-accuracy orbital dynamics in strong fields.

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General Relativity & Curved Spacetime: Foundations

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AST-460Spacetime & the Equivalence Principle: Advanced Connections→

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AST-462General Relativity & Curved Spacetime: Structures & Vocabulary→

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General relativity describes gravity through the curvature of spacetime produced by matter, energy, momentum, and pressure.

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Mass-energy changes spacetime geometry; that geometry determines how matter and light move.

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General relativity correctly predicts Mercury's anomalous perihelion advance, gravitational redshift, light deflection, Shapiro delay, frame dragging, binary-pulsar orbital decay, black-hole dynamics, and directly detected gravitational waves.