Quantcast
  • Register
PhysicsOverflow is a next-generation academic platform for physicists and astronomers, including a community peer review system and a postgraduate-level discussion forum analogous to MathOverflow.

Welcome to PhysicsOverflow! PhysicsOverflow is an open platform for community peer review and graduate-level Physics discussion.

Please help promote PhysicsOverflow ads elsewhere if you like it.

News

PO is now at the Physics Department of Bielefeld University!

New printer friendly PO pages!

Migration to Bielefeld University was successful!

Please vote for this year's PhysicsOverflow ads!

Please do help out in categorising submissions. Submit a paper to PhysicsOverflow!

... see more

Tools for paper authors

Submit paper
Claim Paper Authorship

Tools for SE users

Search User
Reclaim SE Account
Request Account Merger
Nativise imported posts
Claim post (deleted users)
Import SE post

Users whose questions have been imported from Physics Stack Exchange, Theoretical Physics Stack Exchange, or any other Stack Exchange site are kindly requested to reclaim their account and not to register as a new user.

Public \(\beta\) tools

Report a bug with a feature
Request a new functionality
404 page design
Send feedback

Attributions

(propose a free ad)

Site Statistics

205 submissions , 163 unreviewed
5,082 questions , 2,232 unanswered
5,353 answers , 22,789 comments
1,470 users with positive rep
820 active unimported users
More ...

  Gravitational time-dilation near the Earth

+ 0 like - 0 dislike
241 views

I recently read the statement that near the Earth, in the Newtonian weak gravitational field, gravity is 99.9999% mainly due to  gravitational time dilation, and only about 0.0001% due to the curvature of space. Unfortunately there was no derivation of these values. I'd be interested how you calculate these percentages. What would be the gravitational redshift derived from these data?

asked Sep 7 in Q&A by rhkail (0 points) [ revision history ]
edited Sep 8 by Arnold Neumaier

The redshift can be obtained from the Schwarzschild metric. The latter is derived in many books on General Relativity. To obtain the redshift, compare the proper time of an observer at rest at given coordinates with the proper time of an observer at rest at a large distance from the source.

As for the percentages mentioned, such specific numbers probably result from specific given data. You may consider the equation of motion of a point mass in a gravitational field, then specialise to the case of a weak gravitational field (i.e., linearise in the deviations of the metric from the Minkowski metric) and further restrict to velocities much smaller than the speed of light. You can then compare the contributions of the various terms.

Your answer

Please use answers only to (at least partly) answer questions. To comment, discuss, or ask for clarification, leave a comment instead.
To mask links under text, please type your text, highlight it, and click the "link" button. You can then enter your link URL.
Please consult the FAQ for as to how to format your post.
This is the answer box; if you want to write a comment instead, please use the 'add comment' button.
Live preview (may slow down editor)   Preview
Your name to display (optional):
Privacy: Your email address will only be used for sending these notifications.
Anti-spam verification:
If you are a human please identify the position of the character covered by the symbol $\varnothing$ in the following word:
p$\hbar$ysicsOv$\varnothing$rflow
Then drag the red bullet below over the corresponding character of our banner. When you drop it there, the bullet changes to green (on slow internet connections after a few seconds).
Please complete the anti-spam verification




user contributions licensed under cc by-sa 3.0 with attribution required

Your rights
...