A Man In A Box?

This was Einstein's classic thought experiment that he used to argue that gravitation and acceleration are one and the same. However, you could tell if you were on the Earth (or a planet) by dropping two ball bearings at the same moment. If you measure the distance between them at the beginning and end of their fall you will find they are slightly closer together at the end of the fall because they are falling towards the center of the body. Similarly, if you were on a rotating space station the balls would spread apart away from the center. One can in theory determine a difference between acceleration alone and gravity, and that is why I think Einstein's thought experiment is flawed.

Interesting, never thought of that. The point I was trying to make is that, acceleration of a massive body relative to space produces an inertial force on that massive body. If space was accelerating towards the earth at 9.8m/s/s it would produce the same gravitational effects we observe.

What you are talking about is the Machian view of gravity. In Mach's view however it is the relative movement of the rest of the mass in the universe and not the SPACE that causes the effect.

This differs from the Machian view of gravity. The conclusion I draw from that thought experiment is that space is a thing with physical properties. If this were true, the simplest explaination for gravity would be that space accelerates towards massive bodies. It seems to be the logical conclusion.

The old aether theories were based on this idea. I believe Herbert Ives and others proposed local aether flow going towards the center of the Earth. The only thing I never understood about this concept is where does the aether go when it reaches the center of the body? It has to go somewhere so that more aether may flow there. How do you answer that one?

Where does the aether go? It would make sense if matter moves at the speed of light relative to space. Light moves through space at the speed of light and space moves through matter at the speed of light. Space accelerates towards the nucleus of each atom. What happens to space after that? I have thoughts but no conlusions yet. It requires a discussion on reality, the origin of space/matter and space vs nothing to understand my point of view.