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:

    Whatever does not spring from a man’s free choice, or is only the result of instruction and guidance, does not enter into his very being, but still remains alien to his true nature; he does not perform it with truly human energies, but merely with mechanical exactness.
    Karl Wilhelm Von Humboldt (1767–1835)

    Here’s neither bush nor shrub to bear off any weather at all. And another storm brewing, I hear it sing i’ the wind. Yond same black cloud, yond huge one, looks like a foul bombard that would shed his liquor. If it should thunder as it did before, I know not where to hide my head. Yond same cloud cannot choose but fall by pailfuls.
    William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

    There seems almost a general wish of descrying the capacity and undervaluing the labour of the novelist, and of slighting the performances which have only genius, wit, and taste to recommend them.
    Jane Austen (1775–1817)

    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)