Take the tour ×  Popular books suggest that for an observer in
the Einstein lift the following situations are equivalent:  1,
the lift hangs motionless (relative to the Earth) on a cable in
the gravitational field of the Earth  2, there is no gravity but
the lift is accelerated up  The natural question then is:  "If I
stand on the Earth and feel its gravity does it mean that there
is no gravity in fact and the Earth is expanding with
acceleration?"  I know the short answer (no) but as a devil's
advocate I would appreciate a longer version.  share|improve
this question The answer you have selected as the best, is
wrong. The geodesics equation of GR holds trivially for an
object standing at the surface of the Earth (and so it cannot be
said that such object is not following a geodesic), since
$dx^{i}/ds=0$ and $\Gamma ^{0} _{00}=0$ (the Schwarzschild
metric is static, no $x^{0}$-dependent terms). And the Earth
rotation doesn't change this in any significant way. –  Eduardo
Guerras Valera Nov 25 '12 at 22:48 add