- #1
nomadreid
Gold Member
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I know this is a naive question that has almost certainly been brought up numerous times before, but my search abilities seem not to be sufficient for finding a good answer, so if anyone just refers me, that would be fine. The question: Special relativity concerns comparisons between pairs of inertial reference frames, whereas general relativity deals with accelerated reference frames (equivalent to the presence of mass). Acceleration can be seen as an infinite number of velocities, each over an infinitesimal piece of spacetime. So why cannot we derive the laws for an accelerated reference frame by treating it as an infinite number of inertial reference frames over an infinitesimal section of spacetime? That is, why is general relativity not derivable from special?