Gravitational and Kinetic Scaling of Physical Units

One of Einstein’s great innovations in relativity theory was to break with the idea that there is an exchange of kinetic and potential energy as an object changes its position in a gravitational field. Instead, he assumed that the unit of energy varies in a systematic manner that can be deduced from Newton’s Universal Law of Gravitation and his own famous mass/energy equivalence relation. In the present work the way in which the units of other physical quantities vary with position in a gravitational field is derived on the basis of experimental observations such as the gravitational red shift and the angle of displacement of star images during solar eclipses. A computational method introduced by Schiff in 1960 to predict the latter value that does not involve general relativity plays a key role in this discussion. In particular, it has been possible to extend this approach successfully for the first time to the calculation of the precession angle of the perihelion of planetary orbits around the Sun, obtaining quantitative agreement with Einstein’s original results. The present work on the gravitational scaling of physical units complements earlier work dealing with the analogous