Operational Foundation of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity

Abstract

The measurement of time, space, and space-time intervals, and the related geometries in any gravitational field are analyzed carefully. It is pointed out that synchronization is arbitrary and very complicated operationally; and a method for doing away with it is given. Then it is shown how space geodesics can be used to construct several useful coordinate systems in an arbitrary field, and the associated coordinate conditions are derived. These coordinate systems are then used to find a unique physically meaningful solution to the field equations in the cases of zero, linear, rotation, and spherically symmetric fields.