From: PointedEars@web.de   
      
   Ross Finlayson wrote:   
   > On 01/20/2026 04:12 PM, Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn wrote:   
   >> Paul B. Andersen wrote:   
   >>> You are standing on the floor in a small room   
   >>> without windows with an accelerometer fixed to the wall.   
   >>> The accelerometer shows that it is accelerating   
   >>> in the direction which to you is upwards.   
   >>>   
   >>> If the accelerometer shows that the acceleration   
   >>> is constant 1g, then there is no way you can   
   >>> decide whether you are stationary at the ground,   
   >>> or if you are accelerating at 1g in a spaceship.   
   >>>   
   >>> If the accelerometer shows that the acceleration   
   >>> is changing with time, then you know that you are   
   >>> in a spaceship.   
   >>   
   >> Notice that this thought experiment which became known as the "elevator   
   >> thought experiment" depends on the assumption that the gravitational field   
   >> is uniform.  In practice that is not so, so one *can* tell whether one is   
   >> in a constantly accelerating reference frame or at relative rest in the   
   >> vicinity of a celestial body, say Terra:   
   >>   
   >> As the gravitational field is not actually uniform but   
   >> spherically-symmetric, objects that are falling due to gravitation and would   
   >> be falling in parallel all the way, are actually also moving closer together   
   >> as they are falling.  This would not happen in a constantly accelerating   
   >> reference frame.   
   >>   
   >> The Einstein Equivalence Principle only states that *locally* gravitation is   
   >> indistinguishable from constant acceleration; that is, if the considered   
   >> volume is small enough that the tidal forces described above can be   
   neglected.   
   >>   
   >   
   > The well-known experiments of Galileo   
   > like the wood and metal balls dropped   
      
   He did not actually drop objects from the Leaning Tower of Pisa; he rolled   
   them down inclined planes instead.   
      
   > or the cannonball and the ball off the cliff   
      
   I have never heard of that.  But as I indicated, his secretary's posthumous   
   account of his experiments should be taken with a grain of salt 8-)   
      
   After all, eyewitness testimony is the least reliable kind of evidence.   
      
   > never involve rotational spinning,   
      
   They were not actually fall experiments to begin with.   
      
   But why do you think that would matter?   
      
   > a "spinning" Pisa for a leaning Pisa (apocryphally),   
      
      
      
   > and it's well known that stones slung from a sling   
   > much like a "flat spiral" exceed the parabolic solution.   
   >   
   > So, gyroscopic forces.   
      
   Irrelevant.   
      
   > Sedov for example always includes gyroscopic forces   
   > above the usual classical bit.   
   >   
   > Of course, the usual classical bit   
   > is complete in the linear and kinetic.   
   >   
   > That's rather idealistic, though.   
   >   
   >   
   > Einstein in "Out of My Later Years" sort of   
   > concludes his section on physics, the mechanics,   
   > with an "un-linear" derivation of mass/energy equivalency,   
   > not the usual one, about the centrally-symmetric.   
      
   Pseudoscientific word salad (again).   
      
      
      
   --   
   PointedEars   
      
   Twitter: @PointedEars2   
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