Why can't Gravitational Accelerations vanish everywhere?

[PeterDonis]

I arbitrarily assigned to all downward pointing acceleration vectors (such as the acceleration of a freely falling object) a negative sign.

Um, what? Giving a negative sign to downward pointing vectors is standard procedure, and it is how I was already interpreting your post. You gave your a a negative sign, meaning it points downward--which is exactly what "acceleration due to gravity" does, it accelerates things downward. So your a is "acceleration due to gravity". Your g, with a positive sign, points upwards, by your own convention described in the quote above, and "acceleration due to gravity" does not point upwards, so that can't be what g is. So what is g?

 

[David Lewis]

Acceleration due to gravity (g) in this context is a field property. Nothing needs to actually move. If you are sitting in your chair, g is still weight divided by mass.

 

[Nugatory]

all downward pointing acceleration vectors

By "downward pointing" do you mean "pointing towards the center of the earth"? If not, then what do you mean by "downward pointing"? And if you do, how does your description of gravity work in areas far from the earth?

You may be tempted to appeal to the direction of the local gravitational field... But that won't work because it's the gradient of the gravitational potential, and that potential is only defined for some spacetimes. (I think your model could be made workable in a static universe, but that's not the universe we live in).

[Edit: Just after I wrote the above, I saw the bit where you said "Acceleration due to gravity (g) in this context is a field property.". So it appears that you have indeed succumbed to that temptation.]

 

[PeterDonis]

Acceleration due to gravity (g) in this context is a field property.

Which still doesn't address the issue I raised. This "field property" points downward--towards the center of the Earth. (I'm restricting attention here to the cases where the Earth is nearby; for other cases, Nugatory's comment is valid and you haven't addressed that either.) So it corresponds to a in your response, not g. So what does g correspond to?

Perhaps it will save some back and forth if I give the correct Newtonian analysis for Nugatory's examples:

1) I am sitting in my chair typing this.
2) I am in freefall after jumping off a tall building and before I hit the ground.
3) I am weightless in Earth orbit.
4) I in a spaceship firing its engines in such a way as to produce an acceleration of 1g inside the ship.

1) Gravity is pulling you down with an acceleration of $- g$. The chair is pushing you up with an acceleration of $+ g$. The net acceleration is zero because the two cancel. But the acceleration due to gravity, $- g$, doesn't count when determining what the accelerometer reads; in Newtonian physics, gravity is unique among all forces in having this property. So the accelerometer reads $+ g$.

2) Gravity is pulling you down with an acceleration of $- g$. There is no other force acting, and gravity doesn't count towards the accelerometer reading, so the accelerometer reads zero.

3) Same as #2 except that you also have a tangential velocity; but that is perpendicular to the direction of acceleration so it doesn't affect the analysis.

4) The spaceship engine is pushing you with an acceleration of $+ g$. There is no other force acting. So the accelerometer reads $+ g$.

For comparison, here is the GR analysis for each of the examples:

1) The chair is pushing you up with an acceleration of $+ g$. It is the only force acting (in GR, gravity isn't a force). So the accelerometer reads $+ g$.

2) No force is acting on you, so the accelerometer reads zero.

3) Same as #2.

4) Same as #1 except that the spaceship engine is pushing you instead of the chair.

As you can see, the GR analysis is simpler because it doesn't have to categorize gravity as a "force" with unique special properties such as not registering on accelerometers.

 

[PeterDonis]

that potential is only defined for some spacetimes

I suspect that one of his issues is that he is implicitly thinking in Newtonian terms, where gravitational potential is always defined because Newtonian physics has absolute space. (But even in Newtonian terms, he's still giving the wrong answers, as I illustrated in my previous post by giving the right ones.)

 

[David Lewis]

PeterDonis wrote: But the acceleration due to gravity, −g, doesn't count when determining what the accelerometer reads; in Newtonian physics, gravity is unique among all forces in having this property.

David Lewis wrote: Agreed, but if you ignore whatever effect gravity is having and instead just assume the accelerometer is accelerating straight up at g, you can predict the effect gravity will have on the readout.

(In this discussion g is what the free-fall acceleration would be of objects in a gravitational field of specified intensity.)

 

[PeterDonis]

if you ignore whatever effect gravity is having and instead just assume the accelerometer is accelerating straight up at g, you can predict the effect gravity will have on the readout.

In other words, you are changing the meaning of "acceleration" whenever you want to in order to make it seem like you're saying something meaningful.

There is a sense in which, when you are sitting in your chair, you and the accelerometer attached to you are indeed accelerating straight up at g. Your proper acceleration is exactly that, and that's what the accelerometer reads. There is no "gravity" at all; it's just the chair pushing up on you. But you have never used "acceleration" in that sense in this thread; you have always used it to mean coordinate acceleration. If you now want to shift your ground and say that "acceleration" means proper acceleration, which is the standard usage in GR, you will also need to adopt the rest of the GR model that goes with it: and in that model, "gravity" is not a force at all, and so of course it has no effect on accelerometer readings.

You could "predict", I suppose, that the effect of "gravity" on the accelerometer must be zero, because the accelerometer reading is already completely accounted for by the force of the chair on you. But that would be no different than me saying I can "predict" that no invisible dragon is pulling on you when you sit in your chair, because the accelerometer reading is already completely accounted for by the force of the chair on you.

 

[David Lewis]

I oriented vector g just to make the formula result match accelerometer readings.

I conceptualize gravity as a physical force (with no special properties), and in this model gravity affects accelerometer readings the same as any other force.

 

[PeterDonis]

I oriented vector g just to make the formula result match accelerometer readings.

In other words, you have no predictive model at all, you just arbitrarily choose g to get the answer you already know is right.

Whatever this is, it isn't physics.

 

[PeterDonis]

This topic seems to have run its course. Thread closed.