ON THE MEANING OF GENERAL COVARIANCE AND THE RELEVANCE OF OBSERVERS IN GENERAL RELATIVITY

Abstract

Since the appearance of General Relativity, its intrinsec 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 essay, through some examples, the concept of observer is as essential to General Relativity as it is to any physical theory.