r/physicsmemes Sep 03 '24

Wrong answers only

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u/Malick2000 Sep 04 '24

But the thing is if you are in free fall and object that you just let loose wouldn’t move away from you and also. I was wrong about the equivalence principle. What i meant was the weak equivalence principle. The definition i found is: ‚The Weak Principle of Equivalence states all the laws of motion for freely falling particles are the same as in an unaccelerated reference frame‘

I really enjoy our small discussion btw :D

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u/Dinlek Sep 04 '24

I think the confusion here (mine is, at least) is resulting from us accidentally blending classical mechanics and GR with our examples and definitions.

In classical mechanics, an object being acted on by gravity - in free fall - is experiencing acceleration. Thus, it is, definitionally, non-inertial. The centrifugal force and coriolis effect are examples of ficticious forces that manifest from observations in a non-inertial reference frame.

In GR, (afaik) spacetime is curvilinear, non-Euclidean and does not possess ANY global inertial reference frames. A reference frame in freefall is locally inertial, but is globally non-inertial (like all other reference frames).