Re: Experiments on the validity of Relativity

Il 05/06/2024 09:10, Jonathan Thornburg [remove -color to reply] ha scritto:

Luigi Fortunati <fortunati.luigi@gmail.com> wrote:

This is what happens to accelerometer 1 in my animation
https://www.geogebra.org/classic/vtvnm8uv where you don't notice the
contraction and stretching of the springs just because the variations
are too small to be visible.
>
But just increase the force of gravity to realize that it doesn't show
zero acceleration at all.
>
Look what happens to accelerometer 2 which is also in free fall in a
gravitational field: does it seem to show zero acceleration?

 
Your animation shows the accelerometers placed in an ambient gravitational
which varies significantly across the dimensions of the accelerometer.
We don't expect an accelerometer to work properly in such a situation.
 
The definition of an "ideal" accelerometer includes (among other
conditions) measuring acceleration-relative-to-free-fall at a *point*,
i.e., it assumes that tidal fields are negligable, i.e., it assumes that
the accelerometer is small compared to the scale of variation of any
ambient gravitatonal fields.  Your accelerometer #2 violates this
assumption.

You judge the tidal forces during free fall to be negligible based only
on the dimensions of the accelerometer and do not consider the
gravitational mass: tree falling in the Earth's gravitational field is
not the same as free falling in that of a neutron star!

They are both free falls but the negligibility is not the same.

Consider an accelerometer made of a single diatomic molecule of hydrogen
H2, does it seem small enough to make the tidal forces negligible during
the fall towards the neutron star?

It seems not to me.

The tidal forces on this microscopic-sized accelerometer are so little
negligible that they manage to break the H2 molecule into two separate
and distinct H atoms: where is the negligibility in this free fall?

Luigi Fortunati