172
DOC.
178
JANUARY
1916
Studying
Minkowski would
not
help you
further.
His
papers
are
needlessly
complicated.[6]
Based
on
the
judgment of local astronomers
here, only Mercury’s
perihelion
motion
is
secure,
which
drops very rapidly
(like
1/R5/2)
with
the orbital
radius. If
the orbits
of Venus and
the Earth
were more
eccentric,
the
effect
could also have been
demonstrated with
these.
The
great
magnification
of
the
effect
against
our
calculation[7] stems from that,
according
to
the
new
theory,
the
g11-g33’s
also
appear
in
the
first
order[8]
and
hence
contribute
to
the
perihelion
motion.
The
amount is
determined
very reliably by
means
of
the
Sun’s transits.
The
other
effects
hardly
come
into consideration
(solar
rotation
virtually not,
perturbation
deviations from Newton’s
law,
not at
all).[9]
In
the
hole
argument, everything was
correct
up
to
the
last
conclusion.[10]
There
is
no
physical
substance
to
two different solutions
G(x)
and
G(x')
existing
with
reference to
the
same
coordinate
system
K.
Imagining
two
simultaneous
solutions
within the
same
manifold makes
no
sense,
and
system
K
obviously
is
not
a physical
reality.
Taking
the
place of
the
hole
argument
is
the
following
consideration.
Nothing
is
real
physically except
for
the
entirety
of
the
spatio-
temporal point coincidences.[11]
If,
for
ex., physical
events
were
to
be
constructed
out of
the
motions of
mass-points alone,
then the
meeting
of
the
points, i.e.,
the
intersection
points
of
their
world
lines,
would be
the
only real,
that
is,
principally
observable,
things.
These intersection
points
naturally
remain
intact
in all trans-
formations
(and
no new ones are added),
only
if certain
uniqueness
conditions
are
maintained. It
is
thus
most
natural
to
demand
that the
laws
not
determine
more
than the
spatio-temporal
coincidences
as a
whole. This
is
accordingly
already
achieved
with
generally
covariant
equations.
The
first
paper along
with
the
addendum still suffers from
want
of
the
term
1/2KguvT
on
the
right-hand
side;
therefore
the
postulate
T
=
0.[12]
The
matter
must
naturally
be executed
as
in the
last
paper,
whereby
no
conditions
result
on
the
structure of matter.[13]
The dimensional
observation,
according
to which
electrons and
quanta
require
a
special
h
hypothesis
independent of gravitation,
thus
still
stands,
and
rightly so.[14]
I join
you
ardently
in
your
wishes for
1916.
The
prospects
are
miserable,
though.[15]
Affectionate
greetings, yours,
Albert.