I Andrei Lebed: Hydrogen Spectral Transitions Without Gravity

[greswd]

I came across this UA article from 2013, regarding their professor Andrei Lebed.
http://uanews.arizona.edu/story/testing-einstein-s-e-mc2-in-outer-space

The article is written for laymen, and I'm no expert myself, but it seems to suggest that there won't be any atomic absorption for hydrogen in flat spacetime, i.e. the microgravity of outer space.

Lebed's calculations indicate that the electron can jump to a higher energy level only where space is curved.

and

But what would happen if we moved that same atom away from Earth, where space is no longer curved, but flat?

You guessed it: The electron could not jump to higher energy levels because in flat space it would be confined to its primary energy level. There is no jumping around in flat space.

“In this case, the electron can occupy only the first level of the hydrogen atom,” Lebed explained. “It doesn't feel the curvature of gravitation.”

“Then we move it close to Earth’s gravitational field, and because of the curvature of space, there is a probability of that electron jumping from the first level to the second. And now the mass will be different.”

I agree with the writer's opinion, the idea does sound really novel.

What do you guys think of this?

 

[PeterDonis]

Thread closed for moderation.

 

[PeterDonis]

A new thread has been opened with a link to Lebed's actual paper:

https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/andrei-lebed-equivalence-principle.846717/

Further discussion should be directed there.