Dynamic theory of gravity: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 03:47, 14 August 2006

Revision as of 07:20, 28 August 2006

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The '''dynamic theory of gravity''' was an alleged [[unified field theory]] which, late in life, the distinguished inventor [[Nikola Tesla]] claimed to have constructed late in his life. According to a 1937 press statement by Tesla, he had succeeded in unifying [[gravity]] and [[electromagnetism]].

Since Tesla never published his own theory, and since no notes describing it in detail seem to be extant, it is impossible to say much with certainty about it with certainty. Even the claims allegedly made by Tesla himself before his death, as described below, appear difficult to [[WP:V|verify]]. Tesla's apparently unverifiable claims concerning his own work cannot be said to constitute a contribution to [[theoretical physics]], but they nonetheless remain of absorbing interest to a minority.

==Earlier Work==

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*In 1937, Einstein, Infeld, and Hoffman argued that description in terms of geodesics of the motion of massive objects immersed in a gravitation field follows from the [[Einstein field equation]] of general relativity. To be fair, these arguments are not easy, and physicists to this day continue to try to improve them. However, they are generally regarded as essentially correct and can be supported.

All in all, Tesla's 1937 announcement appears to have made little or no impression upon contemporary physicists, perhaps because his statement appears to have been too vague to guess very much about the nature of his alleged theory, and appears to have been couched in language which was already receding into the distant past.

Extensive experimental testing of general relativity did not begin until about [[1960]]; furthermore, essential theoretical features of general relativity were not well understood until about this time. (See [[Golden age of general relativity]] for more information about events in the period 1960-1975 which firmly established general relativity as our gold standard theory of gravitation.) Therefore, in 1937 general relativity was not quite so solid an experimental footing as it is today. Nonetheless, byBy 1937, most astronomers and physicists had long accepted that general relativity gives an accurate description of solar system dynamics to within the accuracy of observation and experiment. Tesla's murky description of his unified field theory could perhaps have been described as ''fringe science'' in 1937. Today it could only be described as ''not even wrong''.

== See also ==