Tagged Questions

1
vote
2answers
66 views

Can acceleration feel like constant gravity for indefinitely long?

So here's the setup: I'm in a spaceship, without windows as always, and the ship is accelerating upwards at a constant rate of $1\,\text{g}$. So inside the spaceship it feels like I'm being pulled ...
3
votes
3answers
191 views

Does the equivalence principle mean that the Earth is expanding?

Popular books suggest that for an observer in the Einstein lift the following situations are equivalent: 1, the lift hangs motionless (relative to the Earth) on a cable in the gravitational field of ...
2
votes
3answers
593 views

How did Einstein derive general relativity?

How did Einstein derive general relativity (GR)? Did he use: the equivalence principle? The principle of least action? Anything else? Note, I'm not looking for a full mathematical derivation of GR! ...
1
vote
1answer
306 views

Curvature of spacetime in only required to explain tidal forces?

I'm a bit confused about the equivalence principle in GR. I'm quoting from Wikipedia: An observer in an accelerated reference frame must introduce what physicists call fictitious forces to ...
0
votes
2answers
1k views

Jumping in an elevator?

I've always been under the impression that jumping in an elevator wouldn't help at all, especially after reading a snippet of physics where Einstein said that free fall was identical to zero gravity. ...
1
vote
4answers
239 views

Freefall in/out of an enclosed environment

I've just been learning about Einstein, relativity, and the equivalence principle in Physics. I'm fascinated with the idea of being inside a free-falling enclosed environment (such as, e.g., rocket, ...
2
votes
2answers
126 views

Inertial Mass of a scalar field

Does it make sense to talk of the inertial mass of a scalar field? By the equivalence principle, it must be equal to its gravitational mass. We know that the scalar field contributes towards the ...
-4
votes
4answers
921 views

What is the difference between gravitation and magnetism?

If you compress a large mass, on the order of a star or the Earth, into a very small space, you get a black hole. Even for very large masses, it is possible in principle for it to occupy a very small ...
0
votes
1answer
181 views

Is relativistic motion equivalent to fluctuating gravitational fields?

The theory of relativity makes very precise predictions about how an object's motion through space-time affects the passage of time for both the object and observers in other frames of reference. I ...
6
votes
4answers
658 views

Is there a fundamental reason why gravitational mass is the same as inertial mass?

The principle of equivalence - that, locally, you can't distinguish between a uniform gravitational field and a noninertial frame accelerating in the sense opposite to the gravitational field - is ...
2
votes
2answers
541 views

What is the effect of temperature on electrostatic-gravitational balance?

We have two identical massive metal spheres at the same temperature at rest in free space. Both have an identical charge and the Coulomb force [plus the black-body radiation pressure if the ...
6
votes
8answers
451 views

Gravity theories with the equivalence principle but different from GR

Einstein's general relativity assumes the equivalence of acceleration and gravitation. Is there a general class of gravity theories that have this property but disagree with general relativity? Will ...
1
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9answers
2k views

How does this thought experiment not rule out black holes?

How does the following brief thought experiment fail to show that general relativity (GR) has a major problem in regards to black holes? The full thought experiment is in my blog post. The post ...