The General Theory of Relativity Iowa State （广义相对论的爱荷华州）.pdf

Chapter 7 The General Theory of Relativity The General Theory of Relativity is, as the name indicates, a generalization of the Special Theory of Relativity. It is certainly one of the most remarkable achievements of science to date, it was developed by Einstein with little or no experimental motivation but driven instead by philosophical questions: Why are inertial frames of reference so special? Why is it we do not feel gravity’s pull when we are freely falling? Why should absolute velocities be forbidden but absolute accelerations by accepted? Figure 7.1: Einstein 151 152 7.1 The happiest thought of my life. In 1907, only two years after the publication of his Special Theory of Rel- ativity, Einstein wrote a paper attempting to modify Newton’s theory of gravitation to fit special relativity. Was this modification necessary? Most emphatically yes! The reason lies at the heart of the Special Theory of Rel- ativity: Newton’s expression for the gravitational force between two objects depends on the masses and on the distance separating the bodies, but makes no mention of time at all. In this view of the world if one mass is moved, the other perceives the change (as a decrease or increase of the gravitational force) instantaneously. If exactly true this would be a physical eect which travels faster than light (in fact, at infinite speed), and would be inconsis- tent with the Special Theory of Relativity (see Sect. 6.2.7). The only way out of this problem is by concluding that Newton’s gravitational equations are not strictly correct. As in previous occasions this does not imply that they are “wrong”, it only means that they are not accurate under certain circumstances: situations where large velocities (and, as we will see, large masses) are