When asked by reporters to summarize his theory, he said:

"People before me believed that if all the matter in the universe were removed, only space and time would exist. My theory proves that space and time would disappear along with matter."

Generally what is invariant under active diffeomorphisms, and hence gauge invariant, are the coincidences between the value the gravitational field and the value the matter field have at the same `place' because the gravitational field and the matter field get dragged across together with each other under an active diffeomorphism. From these coincidences one can form a notion of matter being located with respect to the gravitational field. As Carlo Rovelli puts it: "No more fields on spacetime: just fields on fields.".[2] This is the true meaning[clarification needed] of the saying "The stage disappears and becomes one of the actors"; space-time as a `container' over which physics takes place has no objective physical meaning and instead the gravitational interaction is represented as just one of the fields forming the world.

Einstein referred to his resolution as "beyond my wildest expectations."