Polarizable-Vacuum (PV) representation of general relativity
Abstract
Standard pedagogy treats topics in general relativity (GR) in terms of tensor formulations in curved space-time. Although mathematically straightforward, the curved space-time approach can seem abstruse to beginning students due to the degree of mathematical sophistication required. As a heuristic tool to provide insight into what is meant by a curved metric, we present a polarizable-vacuum (PV) representation of GR derived from a model by Dicke and related to the "TH-epsilon-mu" formalism used in comparative studies of gravitational theories.
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