[waps]

> Yes, you can! As I said earlier, sufficiently above the sun's north pole, you would see a classic Newtonian orbit, because of the choice of reference frame.

No you would not. Here I assume a correct reference frame : the start point is above the sun's north pole, but it is in gravitational freefall, not artificially accelerated to the same relative position above the sun. If you looked at the earth moving and describe it's movement as an equation in relativistic space you'd get p = k * s + c (with k a real number, p s and c vectors).

This is not a rotation, obviously.

Intuitive observation would show rotation, but that's wrong, or at least that's not really what's happening. Note that your position "above the sun's north pole" is actually an accelerated movement at a point in time. As such it is not a reference frame that is at rest, and as such is not the type of reference frame you'd want to use for anything, unless of course you're using newtonian physics.