Abstract
We first present the salient features of the gravitational time dilation and redshift effects in two ways; by considering the oscillation frequencies/rates of clocks at different heights/potentials and by considering the photons emitted by these clocks such as atoms/nuclei. We then point out to the extension of these gravitational effects to static electricity along with two experiments performed in the '30s with null results of the electrostatic redshift. We show that the absence of this redshift is a consequence of the conservation of electric charge. We discuss the electrical time dilation and redshift effects in detail and argue that the electrostatic time dilation in an electric field must be a fact of Nature. We then present a general relativistic scheme that explains this effect. We also introduce an electrical equivalence principle analogous to the gravitational one and demonstrate how to obtain the electrostatic time dilation by this principle. We emphasize the importance of ionic atomic clocks to measure this effect whose confirmation would support the general relativistic scheme presented. We finally go over an attempt in the literature to explain the impossibility of the experimental observation of the electrostatic redshift due to its smallness by employing the Reissner - Nordström metric in general relativity. We argue that the Q2 - term in this metric is due to the minuscule contribution of the energy of the electric field of the central body to its gravitational field. Thus being gravitational, this metric cannot be used to calculate the amount of the alleged electrostatic redshift.
Highlights
That time passes differently at different heights or potentials in a gravitational field is called the gravitational time dilation
To sum up what we have reviewed so far, our analysis shows clearly that (i) the gravitational time dilation effect is due to the difference in the total energies of objects when they are at different altitudes in a gravitational field, (ii) the frequency of photons do not change as they move in a gravitational field, and (iii) atoms/nuclei higher up in a gravitational field whose energies are blushifted see the photons emitted by atoms/nuclei lower down in the field as redshifted
We have demonstrated that this effect can be obtained from an electrical equivalence principle whose salient features have been elucidated
Summary
That time passes differently at different heights or potentials in a gravitational field is called the gravitational time dilation. The effect was first predicted by Einstein [1, 2] and was experimentally verified indirectly by means of the Mosbauer effect in [3, 4] and directly in [5, 6] by readings of the airborne and earthbound atomic clocks, and in [7, 8] by comparing the frequencies of microwave signals from hydrogen maser clocks in a rocket at a high altitude and at an Earth station The precision of these experiments were improved recently by measuring the frequencies of the onboard hydrogen maser clocks in Galileo Satellites of the European Space Agency [9, 10]. We argue that the Reissner - Nordstrom - treatment of the electrostatic redshift in [20] to explain the null results of the electrical redshift experiments reported in [18, 19] involves a conceptual error and is irrelevant to electrical redshift
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