"Sue..." wrote in message
ups.com...

Bill Hobba wrote:
"Sue..." wrote in message
oups.com...
So, despite Einstein's hopes, general relativity
does not in any way explain or obviate the principle
of inertia.


GR contains the principle of inertia which says in an inertial frame a
free
particle moves at constant velocity - actually that is the definition of
an
inertial frame so really it is not saying anything. The question is why
do
inertial frame exist. No GR does not answer that any more thane
Maxwell's
equations answer the question why do electric fields exist.

Reference frames are imaginary.

So are points with position and no size and lines with length and no width.
Just because you have not grasped the fundamentals of abstraction like the
average 10 year old it does not mean everyone is as backward as you.

Bill

A mechanism that can store energy when you push it and
release that energy by splashing into a bucket of water
and do it conservativly, near or far from a massive body
is quite real.
An electro-dynamic theory of the 'mechanism' is being suggested.

Sue...




Granted, if the field equations didn't
include the trace term (so that the covariant divergence
didn't vanish), the resulting theory would have many
problems and be subject to many objections, but no one
disputes that the principle of inertia is extremely
well-founded in observation. It is an extremely
well-justified postulate - but it is still a postulate.
General relativity does not explain inertia, nor does
it dispense with the need to organize our spatio-temporal
theories on the principle of inertia and the associated
coordinate systems.
http://www.mathpages.com/home/kmath588/kmath588.htm


Sue...
http://www.fz-juelich.de/zam/docs/autoren2002/gibbon

http://groups.google.com/group/sci.p...e=source&hl=en


http://groups.google.com/group/sci.p...dee0ace?hl=en&