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:

    Don’t get involved in partial problems, but always take flight to where there is a free view over the whole single great problem, even if this view is still not a clear one.
    Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)

    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)

    We have wasted our spirit in the regions of the abstract and general just as the monks let it wither in the world of prayer and contemplation.
    Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)

    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)