There have been literally thousands of confirmations of gravitational lensing—hell cosmologists have created a 3D map of dark matter based on gravitational lensing observed by the Hubble Space Telescope. It’s a phenomena that does not occur with Newtonian gravity, but absolutely must occur if General Relativity is correct.
It is one of those side-effects of the theory that can be used to disprove it if the side-effect does not occur. GR specifically demands this effect exist, because gravity is literally the bending of space-time, which affects the straight-line path of anything traveling across space-time. Light travels across space-time just as much as matter with mass, so its path must be affected by any curvature caused by a massive object. It’s the same kind of test as bouncing a ping-pong ball straight up and down on a train going 90mph—if the ball falls off the table (as Aristotelian motion suggested) instead of bouncing in the same spot, Newton’s laws of motion are worthless.
This also happens to be how cosmologists expect to see the first direct observational evidence of black holes. My understanding is that there is not currently a radio-telescope large enough to discern such an effect yet, but one cosmologist is connecting radio-telescopes across the US to create a massive virtual telescope that would have the resolution required. Pretty cool stuff.
I’m not a physicists so I can’t comment on the details of theory. The links that I provided claim that the original experiment that proved Einstein correct didn’t in fact do so. If the claim is right it would put in question the modus operandi of the scientific community. That doesn’t mean Einstein was wrong but maybe we should be a bit more distrustful of the scientific consensus that is presented as correct and proven.
That’s disingenuous. Your original suggestion was clearly that Einstein was wrong, not just that one experiment was exaggerated. The Amazon book claims Einstein’s entire theory is incorrect. The very quote you provide also says that “even today” Einstein’s theories have not been tested with enough precision, and the conclusion of the quoted article seems to be that General Relativity is incorrect.
Thus, if you distrust anything, it should probably be the article and the book.
Regarding the experiment, the article says that scientists merely mistakenly thought the experiment was greater confirmation than it was, which has already been noted. Surely the fact that the scientists themselves eventually realized this, and designed many other experiments which did confirm General Relativity, is enough to give some measure of trust in the “modus operandi” of the scientific community today.
Scientists are only human, and make mistakes like anyone else. Conspiracy theories and distrust are unwarranted, I think.
There have been literally thousands of confirmations of gravitational lensing—hell cosmologists have created a 3D map of dark matter based on gravitational lensing observed by the Hubble Space Telescope. It’s a phenomena that does not occur with Newtonian gravity, but absolutely must occur if General Relativity is correct.
It is one of those side-effects of the theory that can be used to disprove it if the side-effect does not occur. GR specifically demands this effect exist, because gravity is literally the bending of space-time, which affects the straight-line path of anything traveling across space-time. Light travels across space-time just as much as matter with mass, so its path must be affected by any curvature caused by a massive object. It’s the same kind of test as bouncing a ping-pong ball straight up and down on a train going 90mph—if the ball falls off the table (as Aristotelian motion suggested) instead of bouncing in the same spot, Newton’s laws of motion are worthless.
See Wikipedia for more on gravitational lensing.
This also happens to be how cosmologists expect to see the first direct observational evidence of black holes. My understanding is that there is not currently a radio-telescope large enough to discern such an effect yet, but one cosmologist is connecting radio-telescopes across the US to create a massive virtual telescope that would have the resolution required. Pretty cool stuff.
...the most feared of all scientists. Now there’s a profession I’d like to go into!
I’m not a physicists so I can’t comment on the details of theory. The links that I provided claim that the original experiment that proved Einstein correct didn’t in fact do so. If the claim is right it would put in question the modus operandi of the scientific community. That doesn’t mean Einstein was wrong but maybe we should be a bit more distrustful of the scientific consensus that is presented as correct and proven.
You should be a bit more distrustful of perpetual motion advocacy websites.
That’s disingenuous. Your original suggestion was clearly that Einstein was wrong, not just that one experiment was exaggerated. The Amazon book claims Einstein’s entire theory is incorrect. The very quote you provide also says that “even today” Einstein’s theories have not been tested with enough precision, and the conclusion of the quoted article seems to be that General Relativity is incorrect.
Thus, if you distrust anything, it should probably be the article and the book.
Regarding the experiment, the article says that scientists merely mistakenly thought the experiment was greater confirmation than it was, which has already been noted. Surely the fact that the scientists themselves eventually realized this, and designed many other experiments which did confirm General Relativity, is enough to give some measure of trust in the “modus operandi” of the scientific community today.
Scientists are only human, and make mistakes like anyone else. Conspiracy theories and distrust are unwarranted, I think.