The Elara Handbook#
Welcome to Project Elara! Project Elara is a mission of a team of committed scientists, engineers, and talented people, working across many different fields, to pass down a better world to our future generations.
Who we are#
We choose to believe in the power of hope and we work so that our future descendants can live in a world that we would hope to give them, one where our planet is at peace, and where a quality life is guaranteed to every human being.
These are indeed lofty goals, and we realize that even trying to do so at all is hardly simple. Therefore, we work as a team, across nations and across generations, to accomplish this mission together. To advance, share, and preserve our collective knowledge and expertise, and to build on each other’s work, we have put together this book. It is not simply an encylopedia, an open research repository, a wiki, a work of technical documentation, a manifesto of thought, a developer log, a book on software, a textbook, or a manual; it is all of these. Everything you’d ever need to learn, develop, or contribute to Project Elara can be found here. And we dedicate this book to not only the ones dear to us, but also to the world.
Note
The handbook is actively developed and in some sense it will never be “complete”, as it is a continuous work with no singular author and will only grow with time. Information within this handbook can update rapidly. If you find any errors or problems, please report them to us at elaraproject/elara-handbook#issues. Thank you very much!
The newcomer’s guide#
If you’re new to the Project, we are very very glad to have you join us! Reading the Elara Handbook is the recommended way to quickly get up to speed with the Project. That said, we understand that reading technical documentation can easily be quite confusing, so we have organized the Handbook to be as easy as possible to get started, and to require minimal prerequisite knowledge and background to read.
First, if you are unfamiliar with calculus, introductory physics, or computer programming (in at least one language), we highly recommend you to start from the first chapter, “The Basics”. This has two main parts. The first part explains the Project, its mission, and its work. The second covers basic algebra, trigonometry, differential equations, vectors, matrices, and multivariable calculus. If you just need a refresher on one of these topics, it’s completely okay to skip a section and move on to the next. After finishing “The Basics”, we recommend that you continue on to the second chapter, “The Specifics”. This covers the majority of the Project’s research and development, as well as the technical prerequisites. While reading everything in this chapter will provide you with a thorough understanding on which to do research, we understand that is not for everyone, so read according to your interests and time.
Second, if you have a good familiarity with calculus, introductory physics, and computer programming (in at least one language), we recommend just reading the first part of “The Basics” (the first chapter). The second part, which covers the math, physics, and programming prerequisites, is not necessary to read, although it may be helpful to skim through. Afterwards, we highly encourage reading through as much of “The Specifics” (the second chapter) as possible. This section covers all the theoretical and applied foundations for understanding the Project’s core research, and explains the Project’s research. However, it is not necessary to read anything beyond the second chapter.
Third, if you have a keen interest in theoretical or computational physics, and a strong math and physics background, we recommend reading the first part of “The Basics” (the first chapter), then jumping straight to “The Expert’s Guide” (the third chapter). This chapter is about numerical methods, scientific computing, general relativity, and relativistic quantum mechanics, as well as working on research that pushes the boundaries of modern physics.
Fourth, if you are a developer and just want to work on code, we recommend reading the first part of “The Basics”, and then jumping straight to the “Developer” section of “The Expert’s Guide” (the fourth chapter). You may then choose to read whichever parts suit your interest and the work you plan to do.
We are so grateful for each and every one of our members, and everyone’s contributions, no matter how small, will be added to the “Contributions” portion at the end of the book. Your work brings us one step closer to changing the world for the better.
FAQs#
I don’t understand the code within the Handbook. What is it there for?
Many pages in the Handbook contain inline code that does scientific calculations, generates graphs and plots, or solves particular equations. You do not need to understand them, but we will go over programming within the Handbook so that the code makes more sense.
Why is there so much incomplete/misplaced/undecipherable content?
We are a small team and though we want to produce documentation and work of the highest quality, our time constraints mean that the Handbook does have sections that seem out of place or are far too rushed. The Handbook is a work-in-progress and we highly encourage reporting any issues you find to our issues tracker at elaraproject/elara-handbook#issues.
Do I have to read through everything? This seems like a lot and I’m not sure I can read this much.
No, you don’t have to read any more than you feel comfortable with! It’s okay to skip sections or read only a small portion of the Handbook. We wrote this Handbook to be comprehensive because (among other reasons) we wanted to explain everything possible so that someone reading wouldn’t get lost when we explain our research. But there is no need to learn everything or read it all!
I’m reading the PDF version of the Elara Handbook and I notice a bunch of stuff that doesn’t look like it should be there or weirdly-formatted stuff. What’s that about?
The web version of the Elara Handbook is the primary version (for now) and it includes internal links and HTML content that doesn’t always translate super well to PDFs. While we try to make the two compatible, we unfortunately haven’t had the time to look over everything. Again, we encourage you to report issues you find to our issue tracker (the link is given above).
The chapter numbers in the PDF don’t line up to the web version or the titles in the Handbook, why is that?
Our PDF generator tool works in a way that doesn’t distinguish between actual chapters and introductory pages. We are trying to figure out a way to solve this issue, but it will take some time, and again, please report this issue (and any similar ones) so we know which places need fixing.
Quickstart for developers#
Wanting to edit and add to the Handbook? This book is written using Jupyterbook, a Python-based tool for making scientific books containing runnable code. The source code is hosted on the Project Elara GitHub at elaraproject/elara-handbook. To edit the Handbook, ensure you have Git installed, and then clone the repository:
git clone https://github.com/elaraproject/elara-handbook
cd elara-handbook
To build the book locally, ensure you have Jupyterbook installed, then, with a terminal open to the root directory of the repository, run:
# You MUST run this in the ROOT of the Git repo
jupyter-book build book/
Then you can start writing! We recommend using a markdown editor like Obsidian which makes editing much more convenient, but this is not strictly necessary. Simply follow the below instructions:
To write a new section, first switch to a new editing branch with
git checkout -b YOUR_NEW_BRANCHNAME(replaceYOUR_NEW_BRANCHNAMEwith an appropriate name for the branch as you see fit)Copy a template from the
templates/folder in the repository root and copy it into one of the directories (e.g.basics/,specifics/, etc.)Then rename it to a suitable name and add the filename to
_toc.ymllocated in the repository root in the appropriate sectionYou can now start editing! Remember to commit and open a pull request on github (github provides automated tools for this on its website) so we can add in your changes!
Note
For developers working on Windows, it is highly recommended to configure Git to automatically handle line-endings via git config --global core.autocrlf true before editing anything. See this article here which explains why it is necessary.
All material in the Elara Handbook is dedicated to the public domain. You may freely use, redistribute (free or for a fee), copy, modify, and (most importantly of all) learn from this book. Just be aware that this book cannot be copyrighted, patented, or claimed as your own work (as it is inherently in the public domain). You may also make proprietary modifications to this book and/or its included source code and sell it, use this book commercially, or include this book as part of a product. We, however, do not encourage the practice, as it is fundamentally against our values, and we would hope that if you derive profit from this book, you contribute some part of your profits to helping Project Elara and its mission.
License#
The Elara Handbook is dual-licensed under the Unlicense (Public Domain License) and Creative Commons CC0 License as it contains both traditional book content and included executable code. In situations where an ambiguity arises as to which license should be applied, whichever of the two below licenses is more permissive will be regarded as the sole license to be applied across the whole work.
The Unlicense#
This is free and unencumbered software released into the public domain.
Anyone is free to copy, modify, publish, use, compile, sell, or
distribute this software, either in source code form or as a compiled
binary, for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial, and by any
means.
In jurisdictions that recognize copyright laws, the author or authors
of this software dedicate any and all copyright interest in the
software to the public domain. We make this dedication for the benefit
of the public at large and to the detriment of our heirs and
successors. We intend this dedication to be an overt act of
relinquishment in perpetuity of all present and future rights to this
software under copyright law.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
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IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR
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For more information, please refer to <https://unlicense.org/>
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Other formats#
For offline usage, the PDF version of this book can be downloaded from elaraproject/elara-handbook.