Most early twentieth century relativists --- Lorentz, Einstein, Eddington, for examples --- claimed that general relativity was merely a theory of the aether. We shall confirm this claim by deriving the Einstein equations using aether theory. We shall use a combination of Lorentzs and Kelvins conception of the aether. Our derivation of the Einstein equations will not use the vanishing of the covariant divergence of the stress-energy tensor, but instead equate the Ricci tensor to the sum of the usual stress-energy tensor and a stress-energy tensor for the aether, a tensor based on Kelvins aether theory. A crucial first step is generalizing the Cartan formalism of Newtonian gravity to allow spatial curvature, as conjectured by Gauss and Riemann.
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