From GR to STG -- Inheritance and development of Einstein's heritages

Abstract

A review of General Relativity, Teleparallel Gravity, and Symmetric Teleparallel gravity is given in this paper. By comparing these theories some conclusions are obtained. It is argued that the essence of gravity is the translation connection. The gauge group associated with gravity is merely the translation group. Lorentz group is relevant with only inertial effects and has nothing to do with gravity. The Lorentz connection represents a inertial force rather than a gauge potential, which leads to the equivalent principle. Neither curvature nor torsion belongs to spacetime but certain transformation group and their connections. The statement "gravity is equivalent to curved spacetime" is a misunderstanding, not Einstein's real intention. Not curvature but torsion i.e. the anholonomy of the tetrad represents gravity. Einstein's great genius is choosing metric as the fundamental variable to describe gravity. Some conceptual issues, for example, general covariance, Lorentz covariance, reference system dependence, gravitational energy-momentum are discussed.