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From: act@pur-phy.UUCP (Alex C. Tselis)
Newsgroups: net.astro,net.physics
Subject: Equivalence Principle and Electric Charge
Message-ID: <1534@pur-phy.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 1-Dec-84 19:00:35 EST
Article-I.D.: pur-phy.1534
Posted: Sat Dec  1 19:00:35 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 4-Dec-84 05:01:00 EST
Distribution: net
Organization: Purdue Univ. Physics Dept., IN
Lines: 16

I have a question concerning the apparent paradox between electromagnetic
theory and the equivalence principle.  I hope those who know about these
sorts of things can resolve this paradox in an easy way.
The question concerns the behavior of electric charges in a gravitational
field.  Suppose that I were to take an electrical charge (a point charge or
a distributed one; it makes no difference), put a force on it and accelerated
it.  It would then radiate electromagnetic waves.  Now suppose that I were
to place this charge on a table in my office.  The charge is in a gravitational
field (due to the earth).  But according to the equivalence principle, a
gravitational field is equivalent to an acceleration (at least locally; I can
always make the distribution of charge so that it is confined to a small
enough spatial region so that the earth's gravitational field can be taken
to be uniform over it.).  However, this charge does not radiate, even though
it is in a situation which is equivalent to an acceleration.  How is this 
resolved?