Is Newton's Law of Gravity consistent with General Relativity?

Eric's answer is not really correct (or at least not complete). For instance, it doesn't tell you anything about the motion of two comparably heavy bodies (and indeed this problem is very hard in GR, in stark contrast to the Newtonian case). So let me make his statements a bit more precise.

The correct approach is to treat the Newtonian gravity as a perturbation of the flat Minkowski space-time. One writes $g = \eta + h$ for the metric of this space-time ($\eta$ being Minkowski metric and $h$ being the perturbation that encodes curvature of the space-time) and linearize the theory in $h$. By doing this one actually obtains a lot more than just Newtonian gravity, namely gravitomagnetism, in which one can also investigate dynamical properties of the space-time not included in the Newtonian picture. In particular the propagation of gravitational waves.

Now, to recover Newtonian gravity we have to make one more approximation. Just realize that Newtonian gravity is not relativistic, i.e. it violates finite speed of light. But if we assume that $h$ changes only slowly and make calculations we will find out that the perturbation metric $h$ encodes the Newtonian field potential $\Phi$ and that the space-time is curved in precisely the way to reproduce the Newtonian gravity. Or rather (from the modern perspective): Newtonian picture is indeed a correct low-speed, almost-flat description of GR.


Yes, in the appropriate limit. Roughly, the study of geodesic motion in the Schwarzschild solution (which is radially symmetric) reduces to Newtonian gravity at sufficiently large distances and slow speeds. To see how this works exactly, one must look more specifically at the equations.


The main problem here is this: Newton gives us formulas for a force, or a field, if you like. Einstein gives us more generic equations from which to derive gravitational formulas. In this context, one must first find a solution to Einstein's equations. This is represented by a formula. This formula is what might, or may not, be approximately equal to Newton's laws.

This said, as answered elsewhere, there is one solution which is very similar to Newton's. It's a very important solution which describes the field in free space.

You can find more about this formula -- in lingo it's a metric, here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwarzschild_metric

The fact that they are approximations fundamentally arises from different factors: the fact that they are invariant laws under a number of transformations, but mostly special relativity concerns - in other words, no action at a distance - is a big one.