# Relativity...Another question
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/relativity-another-question/5400
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [December 17, 1999, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/relativity-another-question/5400 "1999-12-17T22:44:00Z")
**Posts on this page:** 7
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@dasmoocher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dasmoocher)
#### Post date: [December 17, 1999, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/relativity-another-question/5400/1 "1999-12-17T22:44:00Z")
My physics is weak, so…what the hell is the Carter/Cartier/insert proper spelling/ coefficient? Background: years ago in college I worked at a hotel bar and we got guests who were lecturers giving talks at the university. A physicist from MIT was giving a talk about relativity (general, I have to think). Over serving him coffee late night, he explained to me the mathematical equations describing GR were not balanced, a “Carter (sp?) coefficient” was a “artificial” factor on one side of the equation that allowed the two sides of the equation to be balanced. Or something like that. (Huh?, I thought) He was presenting an equation/paper that reconciled the two sides of the GR equation without such an artificial factor. “More relative than relativity” was how he put it. From this talk, I assume GR can be expressed as a single equation. For the physics guys out there-have you heard of this?
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### Author:  [@mr\_john](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mr_john)
#### Post date: [December 18, 1999, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/relativity-another-question/5400/2 "1999-12-18T00:04:00Z")
WOW! Those physisicts really have some great bar room pickup lines, huh? I know i shoulda waited untill after a real answer ,6, but the whole question sorta affected my mind.
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“Pardon me while I have a strange interlude.”-Marx
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### Author:  [@RM\_Mentock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RM_Mentock)
#### Post date: [December 18, 1999, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/relativity-another-question/5400/3 "1999-12-18T00:18:00Z")
647
I’d imagine that you’re talking about the cosmological constant. I’m not sure how good this site is: [http://super.colorado.edu/~michaele/lambda.html](http://super.colorado.edu/~michaele/lambda.html)
Except, it wasn’t in Einstein’s own original version of relativity, so maybe that’s not what your physicist friend was talking about. Einstein included it because he thought he needed it to match the known universe–later, when it was learned that the universe was actually expanding, he decided he hadn’t needed it after all. He called it his greatest blunder.
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### Author:  [@dasmoocher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dasmoocher)
#### Post date: [December 18, 1999, 5:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/relativity-another-question/5400/4 "1999-12-18T05:59:00Z")
Thanks for the link, RM. The guy’s accent was pretty thick, but I don’t think he was talking about the cosmological constant. The reason I say this is because the guy said he was getting all kinds of flak for his paper from the physics community. If it were as simple as the cosmological constant, I don’t think that would have been the case and it would have been old news if Einstein himself had known about it. This wasn’t that many years ago.
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### Author:  [@dasmoocher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dasmoocher)
#### Post date: [December 18, 1999, 6:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/relativity-another-question/5400/5 "1999-12-18T06:05:00Z")
Also, what’s a good website to use to search the physics literature a la PubMed for the bio sciences?
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### Author:  [@dasmoocher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dasmoocher)
#### Post date: [December 18, 1999, 8:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/relativity-another-question/5400/6 "1999-12-18T08:30:00Z")
I found a link to what I was trying to get at: [http://monet.physik.unibas.ch/~schatzer/ytg.html](http://monet.physik.unibas.ch/~schatzer/ytg.html)
The math is Greek to me, and the pencil written draft of his paper had pages of equations. What’s the status of this theory? No black holes? Don’t we have observational data now from the Hubble that supports the existence of black holes? Layman’s English, please, if anybody understands this.
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### Author:  [@RM\_Mentock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RM_Mentock)
#### Post date: [December 18, 1999, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/relativity-another-question/5400/7 "1999-12-18T16:59:00Z")
647
Looked at the link. Were the Carter coefficients supposed to be there?
Alternative theories of relativity are about as numerous as internet startups. The difference is that only Einstein’s has survived, so far. That’s pretty impressive, considering how many options he obviously had.
Gravity Probe B has been on the drawing boards for forty years, and was originally scheduled for launch, what, ten years ago? That is an amazing experiment. Alternative experiments that have been developed in the mean time seem to support Einstein, still. But I’m looking forward to seeing its conclusion.