The tensor characteristics of the inertial fields created by acceleration and rotation, and the gravitational fields created by masses are discussed. Although it is sometimes thought that it is impossible to distinguish between gravitational and inertial effects because of Einstein's principle of equivalence, these effects do have different, detectable tensor characteristics. The principle of equivalence is only strictly applicable at a point, while the instruments to measure these tensor fields exist over a finite region. The inertial field created by acceleration is a uniform vector field and has no gradients, while the inertial field created by rotation has a uniform cylindrically symmetric tensor gradient but none of higher order. The gravitational field created by a mass is highly nonuniform with essentially no limit to the number of higher order gradients. These differences make it theoretically possible to independently measure gravitation, rotation, and acceleration effects; to do so, some form of differential force sensor with tensor response characteristics must be used. The standard technique is static, using differential accelerometers to sense the spatial gradient characteristics of the fields. A more promising technique is dynamic; by rotation of the differential sensor, the static spatial variations are transformed into temporal variations with various frequency components. It is then possible to distinguish between the various fields by frequency filtering.
Gravity Sensors and the Principle of Equivalence
IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems ; AES-17 , 4 ; 511-519
1981-07-01
2172614 byte
Article (Journal)
Electronic Resource
English
Strings, gravity and the Equivalence Principle (Invited)
British Library Conference Proceedings | 1996
|Generalized Hypersonic Equivalence Principle
AIAA | 2020
|Equivalence Principle Experiments in Space
British Library Online Contents | 1997
|The European Equivalence Principle experiment
British Library Conference Proceedings | 1996
|Error analysis of equivalence principle algorithm on different equivalence surfaces
British Library Online Contents | 2015
|