The Uniformly Accelerated Frame as a Test Bed for Analysing the Gravitational Redshift

Abstract

Ever since Eddington’s analysis of the gravitational redshift a century ago, and the arguments in the relativity community that it produced, fine details of the roles of proper time and coordinate time in the redshift remain somewhat obscure. We shed light on these roles by appealing to the physics of the uniformly accelerated frame, in which coordinate time and proper time are well defined and easy to understand; and because that frame exists in flat spacetime, special relativity is sufficient to analyse it. We conclude that Eddington’s analysis was indeed correct—as was the 1980 analysis of his detractors, Earman and Glymour, who (it turns out) were following a different route. We also use the uniformly accelerated frame to pronounce invalid Schild’s old argument for spacetime curvature, which has been reproduced by many authors as a pedagogical introduction to curved spacetime. More generally, because the uniformly accelerated frame simulates a gravitational field, it can play a strong role in discussions of proper and coordinate times in advanced relativity.