Talk:General relativity

Short description

@DVdm: The original short description contradicts the article. It reads, "Theory by Albert Einstein, covering gravitation in curved spacetime." In reality, general relativity tells us that gravitation manifests itself as the curvature of spacetime. Again, that's not what the article says. My alternative is correct and does not contradict the article. Nerd271 (talk) 15:42, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

Then I propose "Theory by Albert Einstein, covering gravitation and curved spacetime", or better still, "Theory by Albert Einstein, covering gravitation as curved spacetime". Anyway, my main objection to your proposal was the somewhat accusing tone of the phrase "due to Albert Einstein" , and the re-splitting of the essential concept of "spacetime" into "space and time". - DVdm (talk) 16:18, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

I went ahead. - DVdm (talk) 08:09, 23 June 2019 (UTC)

@DVdm: Thank you! That's much better. The word 'as' is the right one here. I think we should also add the adjective 'scientific' to emphasize the fact that general relativity is not a child of an idle mind or some crazy mathematics on a piece of paper but rather a proper scientific theory supported by mountains of empirical evidence. What do you think? Nerd271 (talk) 02:20, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

I don't think we need that, as the description is already significantly longer than its 40 recommended characters. In order to get closer to 40, perhaps we should amend it to "Einstein's theory of gravitation as curved spacetime".- DVdm (talk) 08:20, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

Fair enough. I think your new proposal is even better. Nerd271 (talk) 12:53, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

 Done: [1]. - DVdm (talk) 13:14, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

• Relativistic precession.svg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 23:37, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

Books

Shall we create a separate page for the notable books on general relativity at various levels? This article is already long in its current state. We do have pages for lists of textbooks in classical mechanics and quantum mechanics, of thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, and in electromagnetism. Nerd271 (talk) 00:37, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

4D Spacetime: 3D Regular Space + 1D Time

Einstein recognized the 4 dimensions of spacetime: 3D regular space + 1D time. 2601:589:4800:9090:489:97E6:2CC8:D11E (talk) 13:01, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

Possible incorrect equation?

Under "Total force in general relativity":

Applying $F(r)=-{\frac {\partial U}{\partial r}}$ to the given formula for potential energy gives ${\frac {GMm}{r^{2}}}-{\frac {L^{2}}{mr^{3}}}+{\frac {3GML^{2}}{mc^{2}r^{4}}}$. Is the force equation currently in the article incorrect? TeX seems reluctant to parse minus signs... — Preceding unsigned comment added by Compoteleon (talk • contribs) 12:57, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

Please sign all your talk page messages with four tildes (~~~~) — See Help:Using talk pages. Thanks.

@Compoteleon: There currently is a problem with rendering minus signs in Chrome and Edge. Firefox is doing fine. See Talk:Fourier transform#Maybe a mistake in time shift property? - DVdm (talk) 14:45, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

Unclear sentence

The intended structure of the following sentence is unclear to me: “Reconciliation of general relativity with the laws of quantum physics remains a problem however, as there is a lack of a self-consistent theory of quantum gravity; and how gravity can be unified with the three non-gravitational forces—strong, weak, and electromagnetic forces.”

A minor issue is that a comma seems necessary before “however.” A more important issue is how the part after the semicolon is related to what comes before. Would the following rewrite be correct? Or would something else be better?

“Reconciliation of general relativity with the laws of quantum physics remains a problem, however, as there is a lack of a self-consistent theory of quantum gravity, and how gravity can be unified with the three non-gravitational forces—strong, weak, and electromagnetic forces—is not yet known.”

Tom Gally (talk) 13:27, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

Your suggested change would be an improvement. However, I personally would not want to suggest that gravity theory must change to accommodate those other theories. Perhaps they need to change instead. Or perhaps our four-dimensional space-time continuum should be embedded in a higher dimensional space with a more uniform structure, like Minkowski space? JRSpriggs (talk) 15:09, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for the reply. I am afraid I don’t understand the issues well enough to feel confident about making any changes to the article (other than adding a comma before "however"). Can you, or someone else, use my suggestion above as a basis for fixing the structure of that sentence? As it is, it doesn’t make sense grammatically. Tom Gally (talk) 06:38, 18 June 2022 (UTC)