Of pots and holes: Einstein's bumpy road to general relativity

Janssen, Michel

doi:10.1002/andp.200410130

Cited by 55 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 36 publications

(55 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…And recently, by employing a combination of Lorentz's and Kelvin's conception of the ether, 14 and actually by using the Lorentz-Kelvin ether theory [40,82,83], the Einstein field equations has been obtained [84]. 15 Meanwhile, it has also been claimed in Ref. [85] that there is an underlying relationship between the GTR and Newton's absolute time and space (via the existence of a preferred set of coordinates in general relativity 16 that is equivalent to Newton's absolute time and space).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…That is, analogous to the complementarity principle of the particle-wave duality, the issue may be interpreted as in confrontation with everything, it either represents the aspect of geometry or the aspect of matter in one instant depending on the experimental arrangements and/or the initial conditions. Nevertheless, and principally, the innovation of absolute space is while the Galilean transformations do not distinguish among the inertial frames as well, and thus Newton, in confronting the quarry that how absolute space can be specified, presented the famous idea of the Newton bucket from the practical point of view [14,15]. However, the Newton bucket provides the distinction of a non-inertial frame, and does not distinguish the inertial frames from each other.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Nonetheless, in this kind of belief, this new reference adapts its nature from the whole matter of the universe. On the other hand, in a few recent decades, some novel ideas and theories have been proposed as "geometrical description of physical forces", "geometrical base 10 Principally in gravitational physics, energy itself acts as a source of gravity and is not capable of simply being thrown away, and also one cannot easily rescale the zero point of it [72,73].11 It had been thought that generally invariant field equations cannot uniquely determine the gravitational field generated by certain distributions of source masses, in contradiction with the requirement of physical causality [14,15,74,75].12 This is known as the point-coincidence discussion.13 In this respect; see also Ref.[15] and references therein. 14 That is, the ether as a substance of some kind, and not a type of vacuum without any properties intrinsic to itself (e.g., the ether would have the property of ponderability, which is to say, it has the power to gravitate or to generate curvature).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…On the other hand, on the way to reject absolute space and absolute concept of acceleration, Einstein himself also attempted to propose the general theory of relativity (GTR) in 1915 [15,61,62] inspired from the Mach ideas [1,17,63] and with the aid of the principle of equivalence of gravitation and inertia [14,64,65] as a clue principle. 9 Of course, in the GTR, no way or solution has also been provided for determining the inertial frames, and in fact in this theory, no preference or reference, as a criterion of non-acceleration, is taken to these frames as well.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Ether and Relativity

Farhoudi

Yousefian

2015

Int J Theor Phys

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We consider one of the fundamental debates in performing the relativity theory, namely, the ether and the relativity points of view, in a way to aid the learning of the subjects. In addition, we present our views and prospects while describing the issues that being accessible to many physicists and allowing broader views. Also, we very briefly review the two almost recent observations of the Webb redshift and the ultra high-energy cosmic rays, and the modified relativity models that have been presented to justify them, wherein we express that these justifications have not been performed via a single model with a single mechanism. In commemorating the first century of the discovery of general relativity by Albert Einstein that was recognized as a triumph of the human intellect, it would be instructive to look through one of its fundamental debates, namely, between the ether and the relativity points of view. Certainly, very vast amount of work have been performed on these subjects and the references given in this compact survey are not obviously a complete bibliography on these topics, and although we provide adequate references, it is a self-contained work. However, while we are trying to spell out some basic issues behind the subject, the work almost provides a brief review in a different perspective about the long history and the situations of the ether and relativity up to the present days. Nevertheless, it has not been only aimed to give just a motivation to research on the issue, and we propose, somehow during the work, to introduce our points of view and prospects on these subjects in a way that being accessible to many physicists and allowing broader views.It seems that it was Descartes who first introduced into science the concept of ether as a spacefilling material in the manner of a container and a transmitter between distant bodies (similar to what that, nowadays, we call it a field) in the first half of seventeenth century [1]. About one generation after him, perhaps one can consider Newton as one of the ether theory pioneers who practically introduced ether into physics. Actually, Newton presented the concept of inertia in the first law (i.e., the inertia law) of his famous three laws of mechanics [2], and in this respect, he considered an inertial frame as a rigid frame in which free particles move with constant speed in straight lines. On the other hand, a free particle is a particle that moves with constant speed in a straight line in an inertial frame; and obviously, this is a vicious circle (or, a logical loop). In another word, it is ambiguous that what thing distinguishes or singles out the class of inertial frames as criteria or standards of non-acceleration from all other frames. Newton, who was also aware of this difficulty, in order to specify the inertial frames from theoretical point of view, employed the idea of absolute * E-mail: m-farhoudi@sbu.ac.ir † E-mail: M Yousefian@sbu.ac.ir 1 space with the aid of the notion of ether. He considered absolute space as a rest inertial fra...

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Ether and Relativity

Farhoudi

Yousefian

2015

Int J Theor Phys

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Einstein took the requirement that the gravitational field equations alone entail energy-momentum conservation as a criterion for finding his field equations in his process of discovery [1][2][3][4]; ironically, it was widely concluded that the final theory lacked any local conservation law for energy-momentum. The equation…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gauge-invariant localization of infinitely many gravitational energies from all possible auxiliary structures

Pitts

2009

Gen Relativ Gravit

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The problem of finding a covariant expression for the distribution and conservation of gravitational energy-momentum dates to the 1910s. A suitably covariant infinite-component localization is displayed, reflecting Bergmann's realization that there are infinitely many conserved gravitational energy-momenta. Initially use is made of a flat background metric (or rather, all of them) or connection, because the desired gauge invariance properties are obvious. Partial gauge-fixing then yields an appropriate covariant quantity without any background metric or connection; one version is the collection of pseudotensors of a given type, such as the Einstein pseudotensor, in every coordinate system. This solution to the gauge covariance problem is easily adapted to any pseudotensorial expression (Landau-Lifshitz, Goldberg, Papapetrou or the like) or to any tensorial expression built with a background metric or connection. Thus the specific functional form can be chosen on technical grounds such as relating to Noether's theorem and yielding expected values of conserved quantities in certain contexts and then rendered covariant using the procedure described here. The application to angular momentum localization is straightforward. Traditional objections to pseudotensors are based largely on the false assumption that there is only one gravitational energy rather than infinitely many.

show abstract

Introduction to Volumes 1 and 2: The Zurich Notebook and the Genesis of General Relativity

Janssen

Norton²,

Renn

et al. 2007

The Genesis of General Relativity

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Unifying physics by describing a variety of interactions -or even all interactions -within a common framework has long been an alluring goal for physicists. One of the most ambitious attempts at unification was made in the 1910s by Gustav Mie. Mie aimed to derive electromagnetism, gravitation, and aspects of the emerging quantum theory from a single variational principle and a well-chosen Lagrangian. Mie's main innovation was to consider nonlinear field equations to allow for stable particle-like solutions (now called solitons), and he clarified the use of variational principles in the context of special relativity. The following brief introduction to Mie's work has three main objectives. 1 The first is to explain how Mie's project fit into the contemporary development of the electromagnetic world view. Part of Mie's project was to develop a relativistic theory of gravitation as a consequence of his generalized electromagnetic theory, and our second goal is to briefly assess this work, which reflects the conceptual resources available for developing a new account of gravitation by analogy with electromagnetism. Finally, Mie was a vocal critic of other approaches to the problem of gravitation. Mie's criticisms of Einstein, in particular, bring out the subtelty and novelty of the ideas that Einstein used to guide his development of general relativity.In September of 1913 Einstein presented a lecture on the current status of the problem of gravitation at the 85th Naturforscherversammlung. Einstein's lecture and the ensuing heated discussion, both published later that year in the Physikalische Zeitschrift, reflect the options available for those who took on the task of developing a new theory of gravitation. The 1 Our study of Mie has been aided considerably by several recent discussions of his work, including Kohl (2002), Corry (1999), and Vizgin (1994. Born (1914), included in this volume, gives an insightful, influential reformulation of Mie's framework, and Pauli (1921, §64, 188-192 in the English translation) and Weyl (1918, §25, 206-217 ( §26) in the English translation of the fourth edition) both give clear contemporary reviews.

show abstract

Of pots and holes: Einstein's bumpy road to general relativity

Cited by 55 publications

References 36 publications

Ether and Relativity

Ether and Relativity

Gauge-invariant localization of infinitely many gravitational energies from all possible auxiliary structures

Introduction to Volumes 1 and 2: The Zurich Notebook and the Genesis of General Relativity

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About