Re: GR1916, available online.

Ken S. Tucker wrote:
On Nov 28, 6:27 pm, Tom Roberts <tjroberts...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The gravitational field is not a scalar or vector,
it is a rank-2 tensor

No Tom, that's completely wrong.
The GR potentials are rank 2, the "g-field"
is a Christoffel.

As I have said many times around here, in GR the phrase "gravitational field" has no precise meaning. But IN THE CONTEXT OF THIS THREAD, getting the original poster to understand that gravity in GR is more complicated than in Newtonian gravitation was more important than debating the minutiae.

Note, in particular, that the Christoffel symbols are NOT fields. In GR they are NOT a candidate for what "gravitational field" means.

In an APPROXIMATION to GR, some specific components of the
connection (aka the Christoffel symbols IN THIS CASE) are
the ANALOG of the gravitational field in NG.


Tom Roberts
.