On the Meaning of General Covariance and the Relevance of Observers in General
Luis HERRERA
Université de Caracas
Résumé :
Since the appearance of General Relativity, its intrinsic general
covariance has been very often misinterpreted as implying that
physically meaningful quantities (and conclusions extracted
from the theory) have to be absolutely independent on observers.
This incorrect point of view is sometimes expressed by discarding
the very concept of observer in the structure and applications of
the theory. As we shall stress in this seminar, through some examples,
the concept of observer is as essential to General Relativity as
it is to any physical theory.
