ASTRON 2B03 Lecture Notes - Lecture 16: Thought Experiment, Gravitational Time Dilation, Non-Inertial Reference Frame
2 Dec 2016
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
No experiment performed in one place can distinguish b/w a gravitational field from an accelerated reference frame e. g. rocket ship and dropping something you can"t tell if the ball fell from gravity or you accelerated up. If bob shines a light in his accelerating rocket, the light appears to fall towards the floor. Like everything else, the path of light rays must bend in a gravitational field. How much does light bend? not much! to make this effect bigger, you need to have a longer length scale or stronger gravity (e. g. black hole) you can look at light from stars (sun) Light goes through a strong gravitational field b/c of the sun. Einstein turned out to be right, accordingly to. Newton didn"t think light was affected by gravity, since it has no mass. even though it doesn"t have mass, principle of equivalence tells us light bends in a gravitational field.
