Note 118 — Chapter XXXIV · THE FINITENESS OF THE UNIVERSE

Prior to his discovery of the cylindrical universe, Einstein had made several attempts to account for a self-contained nuclear universe in infinite space-time, in which the relativity of inertia would also be satisfied. The solution of this problem was intimately connected with the invariance of the boundary conditions, and this accounts in part for the numerous references to boundary conditions which we encounter in all the original papers. However, the low velocities of the stars proved that the relativity of inertia could not be realised with infinite space-time.