As a matter of fact, calculations have been performed by J. A. Schouten (see Eddington’s illuminating discussion of the matter in “The Mathematical Theory of Relativity,” pp. 99-100), and the results have been to show that the indeterminateness of rotation resulting from the sun’s relative motion is no more than 1".94 a century in Einstein’s theory. And, most certainly, neither Newton’s experiment of the rotating bucket of water nor even the more precise tests taken with pendulums and gyroscopes would be able to detect a negligible magnitude of this sort. Hence it would appear that the general theory, though necessitating a fluctuating space-time background, is yet in perfect harmony with those dynamical facts of rotation which drove Newton to absolute space more than two hundred years ago.
[154] (I
) refers to the boundary conditions of the cylindrical universe.
[155] Inserted in order to conform to previous terminology.
[156] A tensor expression built up of the
’s, and presenting the property of conservation, is given by
. We may identify this expression, therefore, with the presence of a permanent entity such as matter. Outside these permanent entities the space-time structure would be given by