- #1
Adel Makram
- 635
- 15
I am trying to understand why the special relativity is not suitable for describing the gravity.
Consider a counterexample assuming it is the suitable and the space-time containing a gravitational mass is flat. Then one could describe the acceleration of a test particle from his inertial frame of reference (FOR) where the gravitational mass is located in the center of this coordinates system. If, however, there is another observer moving relative to the first system with a constant speed, he can still calculate the acceleration of the test particle relative to his new coordinates. However, this gives different acceleration because the acceleration is frame dependent according to SR which may not agree with the fact that the different value of new acceleration must also match the value given by ##g=G\frac{M}{r^2}## and ##M## should be larger relative to the moving observer. This drove Einstein to think about the general covariance principle where only the free falling observer has the privilege to consider his frame inertial which leads to considering all other frames non-inertial and hence the curved space-time emerged.
Is this a true argument?
Consider a counterexample assuming it is the suitable and the space-time containing a gravitational mass is flat. Then one could describe the acceleration of a test particle from his inertial frame of reference (FOR) where the gravitational mass is located in the center of this coordinates system. If, however, there is another observer moving relative to the first system with a constant speed, he can still calculate the acceleration of the test particle relative to his new coordinates. However, this gives different acceleration because the acceleration is frame dependent according to SR which may not agree with the fact that the different value of new acceleration must also match the value given by ##g=G\frac{M}{r^2}## and ##M## should be larger relative to the moving observer. This drove Einstein to think about the general covariance principle where only the free falling observer has the privilege to consider his frame inertial which leads to considering all other frames non-inertial and hence the curved space-time emerged.
Is this a true argument?