- #1
- 3,802
- 95
I just recently heard about how this small but still existent flat-Earth society believe that gravity on our supposedly flat Earth is caused by the Earth always moving upward at a constant velocity.
Now obviously assuming the Earth is flat and that gravity isn't caused by mass attraction, then this still couldn't be the case because you would need a constant acceleration upwards rather than a constant velocity to have the same effect as gravity.
So I was wondering, in this scenario - whatever the force is that is accelerating the Earth - would it be possible to keep accelerating it indefinitely? From an observer not on the Earth, it would seem that the mass of Earth would increase without bound as it reaches the speed of light and thus the acceleration couldn't be maintained with the same force being applied. However, for an observer on the Earth it would still be experiencing the same acceleration since from its perspective they are still stationary in a sense.
Are both these observations correct? And would observing that the humans on Earth are experiencing the same gravity effects even when their acceleration is now negligible in the other frame of reference be pretty much the same as observing them slowing in time?
Now obviously assuming the Earth is flat and that gravity isn't caused by mass attraction, then this still couldn't be the case because you would need a constant acceleration upwards rather than a constant velocity to have the same effect as gravity.
So I was wondering, in this scenario - whatever the force is that is accelerating the Earth - would it be possible to keep accelerating it indefinitely? From an observer not on the Earth, it would seem that the mass of Earth would increase without bound as it reaches the speed of light and thus the acceleration couldn't be maintained with the same force being applied. However, for an observer on the Earth it would still be experiencing the same acceleration since from its perspective they are still stationary in a sense.
Are both these observations correct? And would observing that the humans on Earth are experiencing the same gravity effects even when their acceleration is now negligible in the other frame of reference be pretty much the same as observing them slowing in time?