I think General Relativity is based on the idea that a frame of reference that’s in freefall is equivalent to one that in a gravity free region of space (at least that was one of Einstein’s Gedankenexperiments that led him to his theory of GR).
Having said that, in reality a sufficiently strong gravitational field will cause a tidal effect, which will crush you along one axis and pull you apart along another.
raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world 1 year ago
There was definitely something like that - I am not sure if free-fall and being accelerated in a gravitational field are the same though. It may be that GR is talking about moving along lines in space-time that have the same gravitational potential (orbits), and moving across potential lines counts as an accelerated frame of reference in which you wouldn’t observe the same as in a reference frame moving at constant speed.
jon@lemdro.id 1 year ago
I was thinking of the Equivalence Principle:
raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world 1 year ago
okay, but that would be an accelerated frame of reference, not equivalent to one that is “gravity free”