Freefall - 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:  Freefall

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

    The political core of any movement for freedom in the society has to have the political imperative to protect free speech.
    bell hooks (b. 1955)

    Reprehension is a kind of middle thing betwixt admonition and correction: it is sharpe admonition, but a milde correction. It is rather to be used because it may be a meanes to prevent strokes and blowes, especially in ingenuous and good natured children. [Blows are] the last remedy which a parent can use: a remedy which may doe good when nothing else can.
    William Gouge, Puritan writer. As quoted in The Rise and Fall of Childhood by C. John Sommerville, ch. 11 (rev. 1990)

    Never alone
    Did the King sigh, but with a general groan.
    William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

    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)