The Dynamics of Spacetime Curvature: Nonlinear Aspects

Although general relativity is among the oldest and most studied of all nonlinear theories in physics, it has played only a modest role in the exciting soliton and chaos developments of recent years. There are three causes of this, I think: (i) The absence of any experimental data for strong gravity situations, which has protected relativists from having their noses rubbed in chaos; (ii) the extreme difficulty of solving Einstein’s equations, which has induced relativists to concentrate on situations of weak gravity or high symmetry where chaos is usually absent and soliton-like structures were recognized as such only recently; and (iii) inadequate communication between relativists and people working on solitons and chaos