ABSTRACT

The gravitational potentials are negative, so that clocks should run more slowly as they come nearer to a massive object such as a star. The prediction of the frequency shift does not really need the machinery of people theory of gravitation, since it is implicit in the experimental results of Eotvos, that gravity forces are proportional to the energy content. Thus, the frequency shift corresponds to the gravitational energy of the photon energy. The photons are emitted at the top and absorbed at the bottom; one uses the extremely sharp lines discovered by Mossbauer coming from nuclear transitions in crystals. There are some numerical coincidences that people might mention at this point, in order to suggest how the "natural" dimensions of length might arise out of cosmology in some sense. The coincidence involves no "theory" as such—it merely serves to illustrate the type of connection that might eventually be predicted by a detailed theory.