Mach's Principle
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
- apparently the 'absolute rotational inertia' is still an unsolved problem in physics. This is quite surprising for something so elementary. I personally never understood it, but thought that was just my own lack of deep understanding of physics.
- this particular solution doesnt make much sense to me. So what we do is take all of the matter in the universe and average its interia to get a frame, which is then the 'non-rotating' frame.
But then what if all of the matter is moving in different directions? Or what if we gather up all of the matter and try to spin it? Does this mean it's impossible to spin the entire universe, and its reference frame would follow its rotation? Wouldnt that violate conservation of angular momentum?