Related papers: Einstein's 1912-1913 struggles with Gravitation Th…
Scalar fields have had a long and controversial life in gravity theories, having progressed through many deaths and resurrections. The first scientific gravity theory, Newton's, was that of a scalar potential field, so it was natural for…
This short exposition starts with a brief discussion of situation before the completion of special relativity (Le Verrier's discovery of the Mercury perihelion advance anomaly, Michelson-Morley experiment, E\"otv\"os experiment, Newcomb's…
The Equivalence Principle (EP) is not one of the ``universal'' principles of physics (like the Action Principle). It is a heuristic hypothesis which was introduced by Einstein in 1907, and used by him to construct his theory of General…
Einstein's theory of general relativity describes gravity as the interaction of particles with space-time geometry, as opposed to interacting with a physical fluid, as in the old gravitational aether theories. Moreover, any theoretical…
On his way to General Relativity (GR) Einstein gave several arguments as to why a special relativistic theory of gravity based on a massless scalar field could be ruled out merely on grounds of theoretical considerations. We re-investigate…
At the end of the 19th century light was regarded as an electromagnetic wave propagating in a material medium called ether. The speed c appearing in Maxwell's wave equations was the speed of light with respect to the ether. Therefore,…
In this article we present a particular theory of gravity in which Einstein's field equations are modified by promoting Newton's constant $G$ to a covariant differential operator $G_\Lambda(\Box_g)$. The general idea was obviously outlined…
After a historical discussion of Einstein's 1907 principle of equivalence, a homogeneous gravitational field in Minkowski spacetime is constructed. It is pointed out that the reference frames in gravitational theory can be understood as…
Einstein's general theory of relativity is the standard theory of gravity, especially where the needs of astronomy, astrophysics, cosmology and fundamental physics are concerned. As such, this theory is used for many practical purposes…
The field equations of general relativity can be derived from the Einstein action, which is quadratic in connection coefficients, rather than the standard action involving the Gibbons-Hawking-York term and counterterm. We show that it is…
Einstein's contribution to relativity is reviewed. It is pointed out that Weyl gave first unified theory of gravitation and electromagnetism and it was different than the five dimensional theory of Kaluza. Einstein began his work on…
The 'hole argument'(the English translation of German 'Lochbetrachtung') was formulated by Albert Einstein in 1913 in his search for a relativistic theory of gravitation. The hole argument was deemed to be based on a trivial error of…
There is a myth that Einstein's discovery of general relativity was due to his following beautiful mathematics to discover new insights about nature. I argue that this is an incorrect reading of the history and that what Einstein did was to…
In this note, we point attention to and briefly discuss a curious manuscript of Einstein, composed in 1938 and entitled "Unified Field Theory," the only such writing, published or unpublished, carrying this title without any further…
The mantra about gravitation as curvature is a misnomer. The curvature tensor for a standard of rest does not describe acceleration in a gravitational field but the \underline{gradient} of the acceleration (e.g. geodesic deviation). The…
The general idea to modify Einstein's field equations by promoting Newton's constant $G$ to a covariant differential operator $G_\Lambda(\Box_g)$ was apparently outlined for the first time in [12-15]. The modification itself originates from…
A succinct chronology is given around Nov 1915, when the explicit field equations of General Relativity have been found. Evidence, unearthed by D.Wuensch, that a decisive document of Hilbert has been mutilated in recent years with the…
Einstein's general theory of relativity is the standard theory of gravity, especially where the needs of astronomy, astrophysics, cosmology and fundamental physics are concerned. As such, this theory is used for many practical purposes…
With the theory of general relativity, Einstein abolished the interpretation of gravitation as a force and associated it to the curvature of spacetime. Tensorial calculus and differential geometry are the mathematical resources necessary to…
An alternative approach to Einstein's theory of General Relativity (GR) is reviewed, which is motivated by a range of serious theoretical issues inflicting the theory, such as the cosmological constant problem, presence of non-Machian…