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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. It is not yet known how gravity can be unified with the three non-gravitational forces: strong, weak and electromagnetic.
Nonetheless, the first remains of interest insofar as it led to the second. The second remains of interest both as an important milestone on the road to the current theory of gravitation, general relativity, and as a simple example of a self-consistent relativistic theory of gravitation. As an example, this theory is particularly useful in the ...
The term "theory of relativity" was based on the expression "relative theory" (German: Relativtheorie) used in 1906 by Planck, who emphasized how the theory uses the principle of relativity. In the discussion section of the same paper, Alfred Bucherer used for the first time the expression "theory of relativity" (German: Relativitätstheorie ...
A theory of gravity is a "metric theory" if and only if it can be given a mathematical representation in which two conditions hold: Condition 1 : There exists a symmetric metric tensor g μ ν {\displaystyle g_{\mu \nu }\,} of signature (−, +, +, +), which governs proper-length and proper-time measurements in the usual manner of special and ...
The 12th-century scholar Al-Khazini suggested that the gravity an object contains varies depending on its distance from the centre of the universe (referring to the centre of the Earth). Al-Biruni and Al-Khazini studied the theory of the centre of gravity, and generalized and applied it to three-dimensional bodies.
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 Brans–Dicke theory couples a scalar field with the curvature of space-time and is self-consistent and, assuming appropriate values for a tunable constant, this theory has not been ruled out by observation. The Brans–Dicke theory is generally regarded as a leading competitor of general relativity, which is a pure tensor theory.
Most modern approaches to mathematical general relativity begin with the concept of a manifold.More precisely, the basic physical construct representing gravitation — a curved spacetime — is modelled by a four-dimensional, smooth, connected, Lorentzian manifold.