Gravitoelectromagnetism: Removing action-at-a-distance in teaching physics

Abstract

Gravitation is still taught largely in a way that suggests the existence of action-at-a-distance. A theory without such shortcomings, gravitoelectromagnetism, was proposed by Heaviside in 1893, but it did not become well-established because many effects it describes are very small and the later emergence of general relativity seemed to make a theory of gravitoelectromagnetism superfluous. We argue that gravitoelectromagnetism still retains relevance in the physics curriculum because it by no means describes only tiny effects and does not demand the mathematical level of general relativity.