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fore4runner t1_iu2aue3 wrote

Reply to comment by pinocola in Would heavy unstable elements at the core of a star have a significantly extended half-life due to gravity? by SpectralMagic

But, if a person, in the centre of the earth shout out a laser every 1ms to a relatively stationary observer in space they would get the pulse every 1ms? But if someone on the earths surface did that, they wouldn’t, right?

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pinocola t1_iu2m0r6 wrote

The pulse from the surface would be a bit slower than once every ms due to time dilation, and the pulse from the center of the earth would be even more time dilated than that.

Time dilation comes from a speed difference or the gravity gradient you travel/observe across. The pulses of light don't observe any gravity at the core itself, but once they start traveling out from the earth, they feel the gravity from whatever portion of the earth they've traveled out from, and would appear proportionally time dilated.

If the earth were a big hollow shell like an inflated ball, two observers anywhere inside the shell would feel no gravity due to the mass of the earth, and would not observe any time dilation when observing one another (even if one was at the geometric center and another was hanging onto the inside of the shell). But an observer outside the shell would feel the entire gravity of the earth and would see both people inside the shell as time dilated by the same amount.

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