WHAT FORCES DRIVE THE RELATIVISTIC MOTION

In a series of papers, Abramowicz and coworkers have shown that the in terpretation of relativistic motion in terms of ''Newtonian forces'' c an provide intuition about the space-time geometry, in spite of an inh erent ambiguity of 3-dimensional language within relativity. Consideri ng a general space-time, I suggest here a decomposition of test partic le's 4-acceleration into contributions from the ''gravitational'' (''g ravitoelectric''), the ''dragging'' (''gravitomagnetic''), the ''Corio lis'', the ''centrifugal'' (''normal-intrinsic-inertial-resistance'') and the ''tangent-intrinsic-inertial-resistance'' forces. I show that the decomposition yields, at least in several ''standard'' situations, very plausible results. Connections of the presented point of view wi th ''gravitoelectromagnetism'' are outlined in the appendix.