2024/06/22 by James Owen Weatherall, Weatherall, James Owen, Helen Meskhidze +1 · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #FOS: Physical sciences #General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc) #History and Philosophy of Physics (physics.hist-ph) #Relativity and Gravitational Theory
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2406.15932
openalex publication_date 2024/06/22 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Teleparallel gravity shares many qualitative features with general relativity, but differs from it in the following way: whereas in general relativity, gravitation is a manifestation of space-time curvature, in teleparallel gravity, spacetime is (always) flat. Gravitational effects in this theory arise due to spacetime torsion. It is often claimed that teleparallel gravity is an equivalent reformulation of general relativity. In this paper we question that view. We argue that the theories are not equivalent, by the criterion of categorical equivalence and any stronger criterion, and that teleparallel gravity posits strictly more structure than general relativity.