Free Fall - Free Fall in General Relativity

Free Fall in General Relativity

In GR, an object in free fall is subject to no force and is an inertial body moving along a geodesic. Far away from any sources of space time curvature, where spacetime is flat, Newtonian theory of free fall agrees with GR but otherwise the two disagree. The experimental observation that all objects in free fall accelerate at the same rate, as noted by Galileo and then ambodied in Newton's theory as the equality of gravitational and inertial masses, and later confirmed to high accuracy by modern forms of the Eötvös experiment, is the basis of the Equivalence Principle, from which basis Einstein's theory of general relativity initially took off.

Read more about this topic:  Free Fall

Famous quotes containing the words free, fall, general and/or relativity:

    I feel a sincere wish indeed to see our government brought back to it’s republican principles, to see that kind of government firmly fixed, to which my whole life has been devoted. I hope we shall now see it so established, as that when I retire, it may be under full security that we are to continue free and happy.
    Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)

    Compassion is frequently a sense of our own misfortunes, in those of other men; it is an ingenious foresight of the disasters that may fall upon us hereafter. We relieve others, that they may return the like when our occasions call for it; and the good offices we do them are, in strict speaking, so many kindnesses done to ourselves beforehand.
    François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)

    If men would avoid that general language and general manner in which they strive to hide all that is peculiar and would say only what was uppermost in their own minds after their own individual manner, every man would be interesting.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    By an application of the theory of relativity to the taste of readers, to-day in Germany I am called a German man of science, and in England I am represented as a Swiss Jew. If I come to be regarded as a bête noire the descriptions will be reversed, and I shall become a Swiss Jew for the Germans and a German man of science for the English!
    Albert Einstein (1879–1955)