Eur. Phys. J. Plus (2011) 126: 64
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/i2011-11064-2

Regular Article

Gravity and relativity effects on reaction-diffusion systems

Department for Innovation in Biological, Agro-Food and Forest Systems, DIBAF, University of Tuscia, Viterbo, Italy

^* e-mail: porcelli@unitus.it

Received: 21 January 2010
Revised: 14 June 2011
Accepted: 27 June 2011
Published online: 18 July 2011

Abstract

In a space station orbiting in free fall around the Earth, the time interval between two events depends on gravity and orbital velocity. The results obtained in this paper show that a) at the altitude of 1.5 Earth’s radius (9576km) gravity and relativity effects cancel, b) above, gravity dominates and time-dependent processes run faster compared with the same processes on the Earth’s surface, c) below, the speed wins out, the processes run slower and their delays increase with decreasing the altitude, because a space station orbits faster approaching the Earth’s surface. In short, the combination of gravity and orbital speed time effects may delay or advance every time-dependent process, and then also the rate of the chemical and biological events. In the weak Earth’s field —where the time dilation effect on atomic clocks has already been accurately measured and studied— the chemical and biological processes behave as atomic clocks, that is their rate dependence on the altitude h —in μmol/day units— corresponds to the clock’s dependence in μs/day. In the Solar System the effect on chemical biological systems is very small but nevertheless, as shown in the paper, is worth to be considered and studied.