Abstract

I argue that the gravitational redshift effect cannot be explained purely by way of uniformly accelerated frames, as sometimes suggested in the literature. This is due to the fact that in terms of physical effects a uniformly accelerated frame is not exactly equivalent to a homogeneous gravitational field let alone to a gravitational field of a point mass. In other words, the equivalence principle only holds in the regime of certain approximations. The concepts in need of clarification are spacetime curvature, inertia, and the weak equivalence principle with respect to our understanding of gravitational redshift. Furthermore, I briefly discuss gravitational redshift effects due to charge.