Can Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity be Replaced by a Far Simpler Theory Which Only Relies on the Uniform Scaling of Physical Properties?

In 1960 Schiff published a paper which questioned to what extent the full formalism of Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity (GRT) is required in the calculation of three key experimental effects (the gravitational red shift, the deflection of light rays that pass close to the Sun, and the precession of the perihelion of Mercury’s orbit around the Sun), but rather “may be correctly inferred from weaker assumptions that are well established by other experimental evidence.” He noted that the method he employed was not capable of describing the third of the above effects, however. In the present work it will be shown that the latter deficiency has been removed by expanding his scaling procedure to cover the acceleration due to gravity g in Newton’s theory of gravitation, thus further strengthening his argument against the essentiality of GRT. In addition, the scaling procedure has been extended to include other key physical quantities such as energy, momentum and force and even the Universal Gravitation Constant G. The significance of these theoretical developments for the terrestrial experiments of Pound et al., is also discussed.