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Re: Why General Relativity



At 12:06 PM 7/1/02, you wrote:
I'm finally reading Brian Greene's excellent book "Elegant Universe" and
enjoying it immensely.

But he says:
"In the early part of the twentieth century, therefore, Einstein realized
that the tremendously successful Newtonian theory of gravity was in
conflict with his special theory of relativity. Confident in the veracity
of special relativity and notwithstanding the mountain of experimental
support for Newton's theory, Einstein sought a new theory of gravity
compatible with special relativity. This ultimately led him to the
discovery of general relativity...."

Now, I know that GR _is_ a theory of gravity (due to Einstein's "happiest
thought": the equivalence principle), but I didn't think he _set_out_ to
re-do gravitation; I thought he intended to extend special relativity to
accelerated reference frames and then stumbled on his happiest thought and
realized he had gravity too.

My question is about Einstein's original motivation for working on GR. Is
Greene right or did GR start out as an effort to extend SR to accelerated
frames?

Thanks,
Larry


Einstein's popular treatment
"Relativity, A Clear Explanation Anyone
Can Understand"
tr R W Lawson U Sheffield
Bonanza Books NY
ISBN 0-517-029618
offers this:

"This theory [GR] arose primarily from the endeavour to understand
the equality of inertial and and gravitational mass. We start out from
an inertial system S1, whose space is, from a physical point of
view, empty...."

Appendix V p151




Brian Whatcott
Altus OK Eureka!