Einstein’s clock hypothesis and Mössbauer rotor experiments

What is it about?

An extra-energy shift between emitted and received radiation in a rotating system – next to the conventionally recognized second order Doppler shift – has been revealed in a series of recent Mössbauer experiments, where a radioactive source is fixed at the center and an absorber is attached to the rim of the rotating disc. This disclosure gives indication to a possible violation of the “clock hypothesis” by Einstein; i.e., the independence of the rate of a clock on its acceleration. At the moment, there seem to be two plausible interpretations of this result: 1) the deviation of the geometry of the rotating system from that predicted by GTR, or 2) the existence of a specific maximal acceleration in nature when transformation between two accelerated frames differs from the corresponding transformation of the relativity theory. We take a closer look at both ways leading to the violation of the clock hypothesis; particularly by analyzing the outcomes of recent experiments in rotating systems, and by suggesting a new Mössbauer rotor experiment to determine a most feasible mechanism for testing the dependence of the rate of a clock on its acceleration.

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