Python at the speed of light : Simulating Relativity using EinsteinPy

Shreyas Bapat (~shreyasbapat)


Description:

Brief Description

As the ecosystem for Astronomy and Astrophysics in Python is growing at a very good rate, it still misses out a lot of people who want to understand and work in General Theory of Relativity. Each day, this theory is being proved by some fancy experiment. But when it comes to understanding it, we have very less tools available. Python is a language which enables a physicist/scientist to not think about the computation and focus on the results! This talk is about a new python package that intends to solve problems related to General Relativity.

EinsteinPy (https://docs.einsteinpy.org) is a Python library which aims to solve problems focused on General Relativity. Written in pure python, it can simulate the hardest problems mankind ever faced in just 4-5 lines of code! A problem of the precession of perihelion of Mercury, which troubled Einstein for 15-20 years, can be solved using python in seconds!

As we speak, new features are being added in the library like, simulation of binary black hole merger, symbolic calculations, visualisations of the hypersurfaces. EinsteinPy also enables a user to define different geometries of the space-time. It can also calculate trajectories of time like geodesics and hence can calculate relativistically correct orbits!

The talk will discuss how hard the problem was, how difficult it is to actually calculate/visualise it, and how we were able to do it using Python! The talk will also focus on how it will change the perception of General Relativity!

Outline of the Talk:

1) Introduction to the problem. General Relativity is difficult, and it is difficult to appreciate the problem it solves. So, a basic understanding on that! (1/3 rd of the total time)

2) Why Python! (1/6 of the total time!)

3) About Astrophysics and Python (1/6 of the total time!)

4) About EinsteinPy and how it solves the problem (1/3 of the total time!)

Prerequisites:

Basic Idea of who Einstein was! Some Python!

Content URLs:

The GitHub repository for the talk is : shreyasbapat/Introducing_The_EinsteinPy_Project-Talk

Speaker Info:

Shreyas Bapat , is a B.Tech. final year student of IIT Mandi, majoring in Electrical Engineering. He has been a software intern in Siemens Technology India. Also known as shreyasbapat on GitHub, he loves open source software development. Shreyas has been a contributor to some of the major scientific computing libraries like Astropy , poliastro. He also leads the development of EinsteinPy, an open source python package for solving the greatest problem mankind has ever faced in Physics. A problem which is considered to be more difficult than Rocket Science!

Shreyas is the former coordinator of Space Technology and Astronomy Cell, IIT Mandi! He is also invited to participate at Python in Astronomy Conference 2019 organised by OpenAstronomy and Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, US. He is the only Indian who is invited for the same.

Twitter: astroshreyas

GitHub: shreyasbapat

Debian Salsa: shreyasbapat-guest

Speaker Links:

Twitter: astroshreyas

GitHub: shreyasbapat

Debian Salsa: shreyasbapat-guest

Personal Webpage: https://shreyasb.com

Blog: https://blog.shreyasb.com

Section: Scientific Computing
Type: Talks
Target Audience: Intermediate
Last Updated: