These proceedings are based on lectures delivered at the “RTN Winter School on Strings, Supergravity and Gauge Theories”, CERN, January 16 January 20, 2006. The school was mainly aimed at Ph.D. students and young postdocs. The lectures start with a brief introduction to spacetime singularities and the string theory resolution of certain static singularities. Then they discuss attempts to resolv...

In order to prevent “unavoidable” break-down of the “peaceful coexistence” between foundations of quantum theory and relativity I propose a new type of a quantum gauge theory (superrelativity). This differs from ordinary gauge theories in the sense that the affine connection of this theory is constructed from first derivatives of the Fubini-Study metric tensor in the projective Hilbert space of...

Historians of science have published many studies of the reception of Einstein’s special and general theories of relativity. Based on a review of these studies, and my own research on the role of the light-bending prediction in the reception of general relativity, I discuss the role of three kinds of reasons for accepting relativity: (1) empirical predictions and explanations; (2) social-psycho...