This book contains almost 500 problems and solutions in the fields of
special relativity, general relativity, gravitation, relativistic astrophysics
and cosmology. The collection is motivated by a simple premise: that
the most important content of this field does not lie in its rigorous
axiomatic development, nor, necessarily, in its intrinsic aesthetic beauty, but
rather does lie in computable results, predictions, and models for
phenomena in the real universe. Accordingly, we have aimed for problems whose
statement is broadly understandable in physical terms and have tried to
make their statement independent of notational conventions. We hope to
awaken the reader's curiosity. ("Now how would one show that...?") We
have steered clear of purely technical problems, found in texts, of the form
"prove equation 17.4.38." In our solutions we also try to show the reader
"good" ways to compute things, methods and tricks which can vastly
reduce the labor of a plug-in and grind-away approach, but we also try to
avoid the opposite pitfall of introducing too much confusing but powerful
formalism for an easy problem. There is often a lot of leeway in this
balance, and the reader should not be surprised if his solutions use a
rather smaller (or larger) set of calculational tools.