Thread: Seriousness In science we Trust.
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Old 10-17-2010, 04:40 PM   #50
beppe
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Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT View Post
No, that's not entirely corrrect. You are absolutely right that a large mass does cause the path of light to "bend", but this is actually the result of the presence of the mass "bending space" - the photons travel in a "straight line through space", but space itself is "curved". This was one of the earliest experimental tests of the General Theory of Relativity. During a total eclipse of the Sun is 1919, Sir Arthur Eddington performed an experiment involving photographing the positions of stars close the the eclipsed Sun, and showed that their apparent position in the sky was slightly altered, to just the extent predicted by General Relativity, as a result of the light from the star passing close to the Sun.

Although, however, the path of the light is changed, its speed is not. The speed of light is constant for all observers - that is the central tenet of relativity.
right. this is the bias of considering photons and not considering waves. i do not consider essential one view or the other, it depends on the application. space curves, particle go straight, if there is something else, and the way around. It is a question of representation, not of reality.
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