Path: ...!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!news.dfncis.de!not-for-mail From: Hendrik van Hees Newsgroups: sci.physics.research Subject: Re: Equivalence principle Date: 11 Jun 2024 08:46:14 GMT Organization: Goethe University Frankfurt (ITP) Lines: 43 Approved: hees@itp.uni-frankfurt.de (sci.physics.research) Message-ID: References: X-Trace: news.dfncis.de Ub+Q9Ei4LCzz+yL8qtl36Ay432WXQi2KAJRzg/5OZQdnynu4Mx4+bekWY41CRRLAD3 Cancel-Lock: sha1:nA/fmvRE3NaQ4xmlW8ep7h7X8Bo= sha256:R2255vCgtTaRQVtrQ6L8xYSifqQHQ+0Z/P9UHvQMx24= Bytes: 3229 On 11/06/2024 09:05, Luigi Fortunati wrote: > Hendrik van Hees il 10/06/2024 14:10:37 ha scritto: >> Or to put it simpler. In a local inertial reference frame, realized by a point-like non-rotating body in free fall, you observe (e.g., by using pointlike test particles) only the "true gravitational forces", i.e., the tidal forces. >> >> If you sit on the surface of a planet, you are not in free fall, because there are (electromagnetic) forces keeping you there. >> >> That's why the accelerometer of your smart phone at rest on Earth shows an acceleration of 9.81 m/s^2, because it measures accelerations relative to a local inertial frame of reference! See, e.g., > > Your reasoning is based on two preconceptions. These are preconceptions well tested with high precision for centuries. Physics is an empirical science, and theories are built based on precise quantitative observations of nature. > > The first is that the accelerometer measures accelerations (and instead > it only measures forces) and the second is that free fall is an inertial > reference system despite its very evident mutual acceleration towards > the other body (also) in free fall. I don't know, what's evident in your misconception. By definition bodies which move without any interactions except the gravitational interaction are by definition in free fall, and according to the equivalence principle such bodies define a LOCAL (!!!!) inertial reference frame. According to GR there are NO GLOBAL inertial frames as there are in Newtonian mechanics and special-relativistic physics. Pointlike test particles move on geodesics of spacetime, determined by the energy-momentum-stress distributions due to the presence of other bodies, if there are no other forces than gravity, i.e., they are not accelerated. Geodesics here refer of course to spacetime not to trajectories in "position space" of some arbitrary observer. E.g., the motion of the planets around the Sun are such geodesics in spacetime for an observer resting far away from the Sun (whose spacetime is locally approximately described by special-relativistic, flat Minkowski spacetime) the spatial trajectories are of course very close to Kepler ellipses. > > Luigi Fortunati -- Hendrik van Hees Goethe University (Institute for Theoretical Physics) D-60438 Frankfurt am Main http://itp.uni-frankfurt.de/~hees/