Stephan,
No, Like Harry I am having trouble too but I think you are simply
making a distinction between different sources of time dilation. I know that
time dilation is much greater sitting on the surface of a dead star vs. a small
planet and therefore would agree with Harry that it is proportional to
gravitational strength. I also had a thread on one of the science forums
regarding this Cavity at the center of a planet before but I took the position
that the gravitational vectors "cancelled" pulling the observer equally in all
directions but still experiencing time dilation based on the absolute sum of
the vectors regardless of orientatin. Is this "potential" field what I was
calling cancellation? The cavity at the center of a dead star and a small
planet should both exhibit microgravity but the time dilation should be much
greater for the dead star. In science fiction we can store the terminally ill
in a deep gravitational well until medical science catches up with the disease.
This isn't meant to be philosophical but if these fields meet in the cavity and
there is no mass there for them to fight over, will the fields even sum or just
pass through each other? I never got a satisfactory answer on any of the forums
but while following this f/h thing I came across that Beck-Mackey work
proposing that vacuum fluctuations under 2 thz are more gravitationally active
then above and for a while thought that this might be a hint to this time
dilation/microgravity at the center of a mass question. Then I realized the
time dilation kills that idea because the changes in vacuum fluctuation
frequency would themselves be relativistic and the greater proportion of longer
vacuum fluctuations would probably only be seen from the observer on the planet
surface while they would seem unchanged to the observer inside the cavity - I
think this may be an unresolved issue with the Beck - Mackey paper but it did
give me a "relative" way of modeling time dilation. If their paper holds any
water at all then the ratio of flux >2thz / < 2Thz should be reduced the lower
into a gravity well you travel and reflect how much mass is at the bottom (From
the perspective of an observer at the top of the well).
Regards
Fran
>> it doesn't
> depend in any way on *variations* in the *strength*
>> of the
> gravitational field.
To paraphrase:
The **VARIATIONS** in the
> field STRENGTH are not relevant to
gravitational time dilation.
