Minkowski Institute Press

07/12/2024

After a significant interuption of the work on the undergraduate physics textbook "Introduction to Spacetime Physics" (due to two urgent tasks - publishing the volume of the third Minkowski meeting and preparing the program of the forthcoming seventh spacetime conference), my time is again devoted to the textbook.

Here is the page with, I believe, the most important diagram in the history of physics (https://www.minkowskiinstitute.com/mip/books/spacetime.html):

07/10/2024

The 83rd book published by Minkowski Institute Press:

https://www.minkowskiinstitute.com/mip/books/2023volume.html

06/11/2024

The 82nd book published by Minkowski Institute Press:

https://www.minkowskiinstitute.com/mip/books/Gross2.html

04/08/2024

Here is an impartial opinion of Minkowski Institute Press since it comes from AI (ChatGPT), not from a human:

Minkowski Institute Press е издателска организация, която се фокусира върху издаването на книги и монографии в областта на физиката, особено по теми, свързани с основите на физиката, теориите за пространство-времето и философията на науката. Той е тясно свързан с Института Минковски (Minkowski Institute), който е посветен на насърчаването на изследвания и образование, които задълбочават разбирането на физическата вселена, особено през призмата на концепцията за пространство-време на Минковски и по-широките последици от теориите на относителността на Айнщайн.

Издателството има за цел да улесни разпространението на изследвания и идеи, които предизвикват конвенционалното мислене и насърчават по-задълбочено разбиране на Вселената. То публикува произведения, които не само изследват теоретичните и математически основи на физиката, но също така разглеждат философските последици от тези научни теории. По този начин Minkowski Institute Press допринася за продължаващия диалог между физиката и философията, насърчавайки по-цялостно разбиране на реалността, информирана от съвременните научни прозрения.

Техните публикации често са насочени както към академичната общност, така и към информираните читатели със силен интерес към основополагащите въпроси на физиката и философията на науката, като се стремят да направят сложните идеи достъпни за по-широка аудитория. Чрез своя ангажимент за висококачествени, провокиращи мисълта публикации, Minkowski Institute Press играе важна роля в напредъка на интердисциплинарното изследване на физиката на пространство-времето и нейните философски измерения.

03/04/2024

2nd CFP: Seventh International Conference on the Nature and Ontology of Spacetime

16-19 September 2024
Hotel Sandy Beach, Albena 9620, Bulgaria
(C24-09-16.5)

The seventh spacetime conference will commemorate the 115th anniversary of the publication (in 1909) of Minkowski's 1908 world-view-changing lecture "Space and Time," which presented the novel ideas of the spacetime structure of the world and the four-dimensional physics of spacetime. It is organized by Minkowski Institute (Montreal) and will be held in the famous Black Sea resort "Albena" (near Varna, Bulgaria) from 16 to 19 September 2024 (new web domain .org => .com):

https://minkowskiinstitute.com/conferences/2024/

To have a better idea of where the conference will be held, you can have a look at pictures taken during the Third Minkowski Meeting last September (also held in Albena):

https://minkowskiinstitute.com/meetings/2023/pictures.html

The Scientific Organizing Committee invites papers from physicists, philosophers of physics and philosophers on any topic related to the nature and ontology of spacetime. Suggestions for special sessions on specific topics are welcome. We hope there will be sufficient interest in a special session to mark the 160th anniversary of the birth of Hermann Minkowski (1864-2024) "Minkowski's actual and intended contributions to spacetime physics."

Extended abstracts of between one and two pages should be emailed to [email protected] by 1 June 2024. Submissions will be reviewed and notification of acceptance will be sent by 15 June 2024.

Scientific Organizing Committee:
Valia Allori (University of Bergamo)
James Binkoski (Dartmouth College)
Carolyn Brighouse (Occidental College, Los Angeles)
Karen Crowther (University of Oslo)
Erik Curiel (University of Bonn)
Nina Emery (Mount Holyoke College and UMass Amherst)
Robert Geroch (University of Chicago)
John B. Manchak (University of California, Irvine)
Vesselin Petkov (Minkowski Institute, Montreal)
James Read (University of Oxford)
Carlo Rovelli (Centre de Physique Théorique de Luminy, Marseille, France)
Anguel Stefanov (Bulgarian Academy of Sciences)

Contact:
Minkowski Institute ([email protected])

Note: Registration deadline: 1 August 2024

Colleagues who have taken photos during the meeting are encouraged to send them to . Thank you to all who have already done it!

01/27/2024

Changes of domains and providers:

Minkowski Institute
https://minkowskiinstitute.com/

Minkowski Institute Press
https://minkowskiinstitute.com/mip/books/

Personal page
http://vesselinpetkov.com/

Foundations of Physics Is gravity a physical interaction (i.e., Can gravity be quantized?)How does mass-energy (or, more precisely, what is described by the stress-energy tensor) change the geometry of spacetime?

01/19/2024

I will do my best to have this much delayed book published in the fall; I decided to announce it in response to a number of questions on when the book will appear.

http://www.minkowskiinstitute.org/old/mip/books/spacetime.html

(Cover of the Lecture Notes Series: Lecture notes are often written in similar environments)

Description:

This undergraduate textbook is the eighth volume in the Lecture Notes Series published by Minkowski Institute Press. It is built up from course notes on special relativity which was part of an advanced undergraduate course regularly given at the Physics Department of Concordia University in Montreal and from notes used in a one-semester inter-university seminar on general relativity for advanced undergraduate and graduate students, which was given twice - in the fall semesters of 1994 and 1995 - and attended mostly by graduate physics and mathematics students (and several colleagues) from the four Montreal Universities.

The major feature which makes this book fundamentally different from the existing textbooks on the subject is that by strictly following Minkowski's approach of geometrizing physics, gravitational phenomena are shown to be nothing more than manifestations of the non-Euclidean geometry of spacetime, not manifestations of a physical (gravitational) interaction. In other words, the profound physical meaning of Einstein's general relativity is that gravitation is not a physical interaction (as Minkowski, had he been alive in 1915, would have probably demonstrated, and as in 1921 Eddington even mentioned it explicitly - "gravitation as a separate agency becomes unnecessary") and therefore no gravitational energy and momentum are involved in gravitational phenomena.

Another distinct feature of the textbook is that it follows the opposite of the (in)famous "shut up and calculate" methodology (designed to suppress questions about open questions in quantum physics in order to make its very learning possible) -- it follows an approach which clearly puts the emphasis on the physics behind the mathematical formalism. This approach enables students to overcome the conceptual challenges of understanding the counter-intuitive properties of spacetime and to prepare them for more advanced courses on the subject. The main idea is to ensure that students have perfect understanding of what they calculate. Another advantage of this approach is that it also enables students to deal adequately and confidently with misconceptions and controversies in spacetime physics, e.g. the controversy over (rather the assault on) the concept of relativistic mass and the question of whether general relativity predicts the existence of singularities inside black holes (a question recently revived by Roy Kerr [On 1 December 2023 Roy Kerr (who discovered the Kerr geometry of a rotating black hole) posted a very important paper "Do Black Holes have Singularities?" (arXiv:2312.00841[gr-qc]) where he demonstrated that "There is no proof that black holes contain singularities when they are generated by real physical bodies."].

As this textbook does not require previous knowledge beyond calculus and as all new physical concepts and mathematical formalism are gently introduced, it can be also used for self-study by anyone interested in the amazing physics of spacetime and its implications.

01/17/2024

The 81st book published by Minkowski Institute Press:

This handbook serves as a supportive resource for higher education courses in communication sciences and language proficiency. While it is not intended to be exhaustive, it focuses on theories and concepts, that I, through my own experience in higher education, find especially valuable.

The understanding and application of the knowledge in this book have repeatedly shown to contribute to the aforementioned fields.

The domain of communication is fast-paced and ever-evolving, as well as it plays a significant role in a myriad of scientific fields, such as psychology, general language education or management.

http://www.minkowskiinstitute.org/old/mip/books/Gross.html

01/14/2024

The 80th book published by Minkowski Institute Press is a collection, which contains a new publication of two works by Erwin Schrödinger (Nobel Prize in Physics 1933):

- What is Life? The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell (Based on lectures delivered under the auspices of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies at Trinity College, Dublin, in February 1943)
- Mind and Matter (The Tarner Lectures delivered at Trinity College, Cambridge, in October 1956)

http://www.minkowskiinstitute.org/old/mip/books/schroedinger5.html

12/31/2023

The latest book by Minkowski Institute Press is a new publication of two works by Erwin Schrödinger (Nobel Prize in Physics 1933):

Nature And The Greeks (1954)
Science and Humanity: Physics in our Time (1961)

http://www.minkowskiinstitute.org/old/mip/books/schroedinger7.html

12/23/2023

The latest book by Minkowski Institute Press is a collection containing three works by Erwin Schrödinger:

Autobiographical Sketch (1960)
The Search for the Road (1925)
What is real? (1960)

The second and the third works present Schrödinger's philosophical views.

A quick idea of what Schrödinger discusses can be obtained from four questions he asked:

1. Does there exist a Self?
2. Does there exist a world outside Self?
3. Does this Self cease with bodily death?
4. Does the world cease with my bodily death?

and a strong assertion: 'Reality', 'existence' and so forth are empty words.

http://www.minkowskiinstitute.org/old/mip/books/schroedinger6.html

12/11/2023

The latest book by Minkowski Institute Press is a new publication of Bertrand Russell's book "The Scientific Outlook."

This is one of Russell's most important books, because it deals with topics such as scientific knowledge (scientific method, scientific metaphysics, science and religion), scientific technique (in inanimate and animate Nature and in society) and "the scientific society" (to use his term) that can be of interest to scientists, philosophers and the general public.

What makes Russell's texts invaluable is that they are written by one of the greatest minds of the twentieth century with the intention to reach a wider circle of readers. Indeed, Russell has been widely regarded as "the most profound of mathematicians, the most brilliant of philosophers, and the most lucid of popularizers" at his time.

http://www.minkowskiinstitute.org/old/mip/books/Russell10.html

12/09/2023

It seems something is not quite right with the recognition of Minkowski’s decisive contribution to spacetime physics (such examples prompted, rather provoked, all Minkowski projects), if one of the brightest minds of the twentieth century - Bertrand Russell - can confidently write (The Scientific Outlook, p. 109):

“Space and time were invented by the Greeks, and served their purpose admirably until the present century. Einstein replaced them by a kind of centaur which he called “space-time,” and this did well enough for a couple of decades, but modern quantum mechanics has made it evident that a more fundamental reconstruction is necessary.”

This is a totally incorrect and misleading statement. It was Hermann Minkowski, Einstein’s mathematics professor, who discovered the spacetime structure of the world. Minkowski called the four-dimensional absolute entity (which we have been perceiving as space and time) die Welt (the World); we now call it Minkowski spacetime or just spacetime. Minkowski successfully decoded the profound physical message hidden in the failed experiments to detect uniform motion in the (absolute) space (captured in Galileo’s principle of relativity and the Michelson-Morley experiment) – it turned out that all those experiments failed because the world is four-dimensional (with time as the fourth dimension), which in ordinary language means that observers in relative motion have different spaces and times; that is why, without realizing, the observers had been performing experiments in their own spaces using their own times and always had been finding themselves to be at rest in their own spaces. Moreover, it is a fact that for some time Einstein had difficulty accepting the profound depth of the introduced by Minkowski spacetime physics. Sommerfeld’s recollection of what Einstein said on one occasion provides an indication of Einstein’s initial attitude towards the work of his mathematics professor on the foundations of spacetime physics: "Since the mathematicians have invaded the relativity theory, I do not understand it myself any more" [1].

[1] A. Sommerfeld, To Albert Einstein’s Seventieth Birthday. In: Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist. P. A. Schilpp, ed., 3rd ed. (Open Court, Illinois 1969) pp. 99-105, p. 102.