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The conservation of matter in general relativity

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Abstract

It is shown that in classical general relativity, if space-time is nonempty at one time, it will be nonempty at all times provided that the energy momentum tensor of the matter satisfies a physically reasonable condition. The apparent contradiction with the quantum predictions for the creation and annihilation of matter particles by gravitons is discussed and is shown to arise from the lack of a good energy momentum operator for the matter in an unquantised curved space-time metric.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Theoretical Astronomy, Cambridge, England

    Stephen Hawking

  2. Dept. of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, University of Cambridge, Silver Street, Cambridge, England

    Stephen Hawking

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  1. Stephen Hawking
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Hawking, S. The conservation of matter in general relativity. Commun.Math. Phys. 18, 301–306 (1970). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01649448

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01649448

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