Jena 2013 – scientific programme
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EP: Fachverband Extraterrestrische Physik
EP 4: Poster Session
EP 4.37: Poster
Tuesday, February 26, 2013, 11:15–12:45, Poster OG
On the gravitational redshift — •Klaus Wilhelm1 and Bhola N. Dwivedi2 — 1Max-Planck-Institut für Sonnensystemforschung (MPS), 37191 Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany — 2Dept. of Applied Physics, Indian Institute of Technology (Banaras Hindu University), Varanasi-221005, India
The study of the gravitational redshift — a relative wavelength increase of ≈ 2 × 10−6 was predicted for solar radiation by Einstein in 1908 — is still an important subject in modern physics. Two research teams have recently disagreed on the physical cause of the shift. We argue that both teams miss the important point that the ratio of the gravitational force acting on an electron in a hydrogen atom situated in the Sun’s photosphere to the electrostatic force between the proton and the electron is very small, namely, 3 × 10−21 and, of course, it is much smaller on Earth. A comparison of this ratio with the predicted and observed solar redshift indicates a discrepancy of many orders of magnitude. With Einstein’s early assumption that the frequency of a spectral line depends only on the generating ion itself, a solution is found based on a two-step process in analogy with Fermi’s treatment of the Doppler effect. A sequence of physical processes in line with the conservation of energy and momentum results in the observed shift. We suggest that the gravitational field affects the release of the photon and not the atomic transition. The atomic emission is then compared with the gravitational redshift of matter-antimatter annihilation events.