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General relativity, also known as the general theory of relativity, and as Einstein's theory of gravity, is the geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1915 and is the current description of gravitation in modern physics.
The laws of physics are the same for all observers in any inertial frame of reference relative to one another (principle of relativity). The speed of light in vacuum is the same for all observers, regardless of their relative motion or of the motion of the light source. The resultant theory copes with experiment better than classical mechanics.
In Einstein's theory and related theories of gravitation, curvature at every point in spacetime is also caused by whatever matter is present. Here, too, mass is a key property in determining the gravitational influence of matter. But in a relativistic theory of gravity, mass cannot be the only source of gravity.
The force is proportional to the product of the two masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them: [11] Diagram of two masses attracting one another = where F is the force between the masses; G is the Newtonian constant of gravitation (6.674 × 10 −11 m 3 ⋅kg −1 ⋅s −2);
In physics, gravity (from Latin gravitas 'weight' [1]) is a fundamental interaction primarily observed as a mutual attraction between all things that have mass.Gravity is, by far, the weakest of the four fundamental interactions, approximately 10 38 times weaker than the strong interaction, 10 36 times weaker than the electromagnetic force, and 10 29 times weaker than the weak interaction.
By definition, an affine connection is a bilinear map () (), where () is a space of all vector fields on the spacetime. This bilinear map can be described in terms of a set of connection coefficients (also known as Christoffel symbols ) specifying what happens to components of basis vectors under infinitesimal parallel transport: ∇ e i e j ...
The equivalence principle is the hypothesis that the observed equivalence of gravitational and inertial mass is a consequence of nature. The weak form, known for centuries, relates to masses of any composition in free fall taking the same trajectories and landing at identical times.
The relativistic four-velocity, that is the four-vector representing velocity in relativity, is defined as follows: = = (,) In the above, is the proper time of the path through spacetime, called the world-line, followed by the object velocity the above represents, and