Mass - Mass in General Relativity

Mass in General Relativity

In general relativity, the equivalence principle is any of several related concepts dealing with the equivalence of gravitational and inertial mass. At the core of this assertion is Albert Einstein's idea that the gravitational force as experienced locally while standing on a massive body (such as the Earth) is the same as the pseudo-force experienced by an observer in a non-inertial (accelerated) frame of reference.

However, it turns out that it is impossible to find an objective general definition for the concept of invariant mass in general relativity. At the core of the problem is the non-linearity of the Einstein field equations, which makes it impossible to write the gravitational field energy as part of the Stress–energy tensor in a way that is invariant for all observers. For a given observer, this can be achieved by the Stress–energy–momentum pseudotensor.

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