3 ms·
You can't tell the difference between 1g acceleration and a uniform gravitational field. The earths gravitational field is not uniform but radial.
by BreakfastB0b 6y ago
You can't tell the difference between 1g acceleration and a uniform gravitational field. The earths gravitational field is not uniform but radial.
- thombat 6y agoELI5 time - where would a truly uniform gravitational field exist?
- saagarjha 6y agoNowhere. Gravity is just inherently radial. (But if you have a very large spread it can look fairly uniform, of course. Especially if your measure of “flat” is actually curved to the same radius.)
- aardvark179 6y agoNowhere in the real world, but that’s okay since we are dealing with thought experiments. An infinite plane of mass is roughly what you’d need so that the contributions of each element add up to a uniform field.
- mhh__ 6y agoNowhere, i.e. if you are in the falling elevator the tennis balls will fall downwards if it's uniform but any real gravitational field (apart from something of infinite radius) will make them converge gradually towards eachother as they fall towards the CoG
- User23 6y agoIn the pasture where I keep my spherical cows.