Abstract
Einstein’s masterpiece, general relativity, stems from the amazing observation that two physical quantities that a priori have nothing in common are equal or strictly proportional. These quantities are the two concepts of mass. One is the inertial mass, or the coefficient of inertia, and the other is the gravitational mass, or the coupling coefficient to the gravitational field. There is no a priori argument that can explain why this equality occurs. In a gravitational field, this equality eliminates the mass from the equations of motion. Two bodies placed with the same initial conditions in the same field have the same motion whatever their masses.
You will never make a crab walk straight. Aristophanes
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© 2007 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
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Basdevant, JL. (2007). Motion in a Curved Space. In: Variational Principles in Physics. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-37748-3_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-37748-3_6
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-0-387-37747-6
Online ISBN: 978-0-387-37748-3
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