Suppose a very long copper rod. The rod moves through a very concentrated gravity well, such that there is a large difference in gravitational effect at different points on the rod.
Ignore all the bending, deflecting, etc… that make the event unlikely.
Would electrical currents be induced? It’s just gravity, not electromagnetic. But portions of the rod are operating in different time frames due to gravity. Also the field effects are moving along the rod.
This question is an offshoot of a previous question about energy creating apparent mass in a photon. Or anything I suppose.
A good question, and it made me think for a few minutes to be sure. But no, it would not induce a current. The easy way to see this is that gravitational fields are invariant under time reversal, but currents are reversed under time reversal. That is to say, if you made a movie of the experiment and played it backwards, it would look like just another rod moving in a gravitational field, but in the reversed movie, the current would be in the opposite direction for no particular reason.
So atoms of copper closer to the stronger effect of the gravity well, would not attract electrons from atoms in lesser effect? Would an atom in a strong gravity field be in a lower energy state, compared to one in a weaker gravity field? Sort of like the lesser field atom having it’s electron attracted to the lower state one, even though there is no added energy to knock it out.
Terribly worded and envisioned I am sure. But I have this fuzzy concept that is bugging me.