GENERAL RELATIVITY

AND
GRAVITY

A. The Principle of Equivalence

The equivalence principle was Einstein's `Newton's apple' insight to gravitation. His
thought experiment was the following; imagine two elevators, one at rest of the Earth's
surface, one accelerating in space. To an observer inside the elevator (no windows)
there is no physical experiment that he/she could perform to differentiate between the
two scenarios.
The equivalence principle is a fundamental law of physics that states that
gravitational and inertial forces are of a similar nature and often indistinguishable. In the
Newtonian form it asserts, in effect, that, within a windowless laboratory freely falling in
a uniform gravitational field, experimenters would be unaware that the laboratory is in a
state of non-uniform motion. All dynamical experiments yield the same results as
obtained in an inertial state of uniform motion unaffected by gravity.
An immediate consequence of the equivalence principle is that gravity bends light.
To visualize why this is true imagine a photon crossing the elevator accelerating into
space. As the photon crosses the elevator, the floor is accelerated upward and the
photon appears to fall downward. The same must be true in a gravitational field by the
equivalence principle.
The principle of equivalence renders the gravitational field fundamentally different
from all other force fields encountered in nature. The new theory of gravitation, the
general theory of relativity, adopts this characteristic of the gravitational field as its
foundation.

There were two classical test of general relativity; the first was that light should
be deflected by passing close to a massive body. The first opportunity occurred during
a total eclipse of the Sun in 1919.
Measurements of stellar positions near the darkened solar limb proved Einstein was
right. Direct confirmation of gravitational lensing was obtained by the Hubble Space
Telescope last year.

B. Predictions of the General Theory of Relativity

Some predictions of general relativity differ significantly from those of classical
physics, especially concerning the passage of time, the geometry of space, the
motion of bodies in free fall, and the propagation of light. Examples of such
differences

include gravitational

time

dilation, gravitational

lensing,

the gravitational redshift of light, and the gravitational time delay. The predictions of
general relativity have been confirmed in all observations and experiments to date.
Although general relativity is not the only relativistic theory of gravity, it is
the simplest theory that is consistent with experimental data. However, unanswered
questions remain, the most fundamental being how general relativity can be reconciled
with the laws of quantum physics to produce a complete and self-consistent theory
of quantum gravity.

C. Findings of General Relativity

The second part of relativity is the theory of general relativity and lies on two
empirical findings that he elevated to the status of basic postulates. The first
postulate is the relativity principle: local physics is governed by the theory of special
relativity. The second postulate is the equivalence principle: there is no way for an
observer to distinguish locally between gravity and acceleration.