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There are two conformal frames of measurement in SCC.gptejms said:Another question I wanted to ask you(something I didn't understand):-how does increase in rest mass of atoms translate to apparent red-shift of photons(which otherwise have the same energy in scc).You don't seem to be taking recourse to energy levels in your argument as I do.
In the Einstein conformal frame (GR with scalar field) the masses of fundamental particles remain constant and in vacuo the theory reduces to canonical GR. There is a conformal equivalence between SCC abd GR. The scalar field is decoupled from matter and space-time and exists as a 'ghost field'.
Energy-momentum is conserved wrt covariant differentiation, but not, in general, energy. Photons suffer gravitational and cosmological red shift, although as in GR there is no satisfactory explanation of where that energy goes to - it is simply not conserved.
In the Jordan conformal frame the scalar field is not decoupled and affects both space-time (as in BD) and the motion of particles through space-time. A scalar field force perturbs particles, but not photons, from their geodesic paths.
A consequence of the theory in vacuo is the scalar field force exactly compensates for the scalar field perturbation of space-time, so although particles do not follow geodesics of the SCC space-time they do follow geodesics of GR space-time.
It is this exact compensation in vacuo which results in the conformal equivalence between SCC and GR. Energy-momentum is not conserved but energy is locally conserved in general.
As a consequence in the Jordan frame photons do not suffer red shift. They do not lose or gain energy The energy of the photon does not change, after all why should it? It has traversed curved space-time with no forces acting on it along a null-geodesic. No work has been done on, or by, the photon so why should its energy change? (Remember gravitation in GR - and SCC - is explained as the effect of the curvature of space-time, not as a real Newtonian force.)
As I said in an earlier post above in the Jordan Frame, in which energy is locally conserved, gravitational red shift is interpreted not as a loss of potential energy by the photon but rather as a gain of potential energy, which increases atoms' rest mass in the apparatus measuring it.
Whereas no work has been done on or by the photon between the two levels, work has to be done on the apparatus to lift it from the lower to the higher level!
This increase in fundamental particles' rest mass changes the atoms' energy levels and it is this change that is measured as gravitational or cosmological red shift.
Garth
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