It’s just that normal gravity on earth feels exactly like being in an accelerating escalator in space. So you can’t tell the difference from the inside. Like in the elevator you can ask them, wether your still on earth or accelerating in space. Einstein used this thought experiment to develop the general theory of relativity.
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hsdkfr734r@feddit.nl 2 weeks ago
I don’t understand. What’s a uniform gravitational field and why does it feel like standing in an accelerating elevator?
GrabtharsHammer@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
This is a joke about Einstein’s form of the Equivalence Principle:
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivalence_principle
hsdkfr734r@feddit.nl 2 weeks ago
And
I’m just beginning to understand. I’m not there yet.
itslilith@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
If you are standing in a closed box, there is no experiment you can make that tells you whether that box is standing on earth, or is on a rocket in space accelerating at 9.81m/s²
This has a bunch of interesting implications about the nature of spacetime