I was looking at the rubber sheet diagram that depicts or attempts to show how mass creates a type of gravity well indent in the fabric of spacetime. I hope I make sense here...I can visualize but might not be able to explain. I was thinking that if I had 2 identical masses far enough apart from each other, then I assume they would form the exact same gravity well in spacetime. I then emit a light from a point in one well so that it is received in the other well. Again I would assume that the light, for purposes of this post, would travel along the surface plane of the spacetime continuum (represented by the rubber sheet's surface) to a receiver in the other well. The actual distance traveled by the light would be the distance between each heavenly body measured along the surface plane of spacetime. What I'm getting at is this: As I look at the 3D rubber sheet model it is obvious that the real distance between the 2 masses is much less than the surface plane distance if I were to tunnel through or jump the gap instead of riding the surface. So, in my weakest layman's language I ask, if the two bodies in the wells are in a straight line motion (i.e. one following the other) like rolling bowling balls, will the distance traveled by the trailing body to the spot previously occupied by the lead body be less than the distance light travels between them? Do they follow the same curved path between them as the light would? If not, does this mean that in the universe, the heavenly bodies are closer to us than we think?
This might not be helpful but remember that the rubber sheet diagram represents the 3-D gravitational effect in 2-D. In other words the real gravitational effect is spherical in all directions from the mass and the rubber sheet diagrams are just a graphic aide and don't convey the spherical picture. Given just two objects fixed in space, a light from one object in space to another object in space would go straight from one to the other. The relative movement of the objects then comes into play as well as other objects that exist in a real situation. Then you get the curvature effect caused by relative motion, and gravitational effects of other bodies. Spacetime is particular to General Relativity and of course Big Bang Theory consists of General Relativity, inflation/expansion, and the cosmological principle which says that the universe is pretty much the same everywhere and in all directions. Given those parameters space and time can be coupled and the entire universe becomes one co-moving coordinate system. Space becomes curved in such a system by the presence of all energy expanding in all directions acting on the course that light takes across space. The path light takes effectively curves because the objects in the universe are in constant expansion and separation as they follow the co-moving coordinates.
Yep, light can bend, split, magnify, speed up, slow down and can even be absorbed. Ever wonder why light doesn’t reach the bottom of the ocean. Imagine what would happen to it when travels for 13 billion years in space Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Matter is great for absorbing radiation energy, some elements are more radioactive and the matter splits into free neutrinos, electrons and protons or more stable isotopes. Which is used for such things as carbon dating. Black holes can even suck up light that is trapped in the event horizon because the gravity is too strong. And light from stars might take many years to reach the surface before it escapes the stars own gravitational surface or event horizon. I would suggest heavenly bodies are closer than we think and the further away that object is the greater the uncertainty of its distance from the observer, even its apparent location would not be where it looks to be. Simply because the light would take longer to arrive to the observer than if it had travelled a strait line. For a thought experiment, imagine sending 2 space ships to a star 10 billion light years away both travelling at the same constant speed at half the speed of light in a vacuum. One sets its sights or cross hairs and follows the light to the star. The second ship can calculate corrections to follow a straightest line possible to the star, in effect taking short cuts though spherical gravitational planes. It would be like space ship 1 travelling around the earth and space ship 2 travelling right though the centre of the earth I would imagine. While that’s all very good and well I would imagine the light travels the path of least resistance, so if the trip was done for real for both ships to travel at the same speed, ship 2 would have to make velocity corrections and burn more energy. Ship 2 would arrive sooner but expend more energy in doing so. I would guess ship 1 takes 2x10 billion years = 20 billion years and ship 2 would take less than 20 billion years to reach the star how ever its exact time of arival is uncertain. What do you guys think?
I like the way you make a correlation between the uncertainty principle and the uncertainty of momentum and location of objects over great distances of space. On another thread called Uncertainty and locality this topic is being discussed. You are both invited to please drop in an give me your view points on the question of "is there or is there not 'reality' of location and momentum" on the quantum level. That is why I am interested in an analysis of uncertainty on the grand scale and a comparison to the quantum level. In my cosmology ideas I have emphasized the similarities between the quantum realm and the macro landscape of the greater universe differing primarily only on scale. Quantum mechanics via the uncertainty principle concludes that there is no reality of location and momentum in the quantum realm unless there is an observer, and that observer cannot know both attributes of a particle at the same time. There are only probabilities and those probabilities are encompassed in the "wave function". When you say on the macro level that the various factors that light encounters as it traverses space accumulate over time and distance to the extent that we cannot know the location or motion of distant objects you are saying the same thing about the macro level as quantum mechanics is saying about the quantum realm. My point is that it is easy when considering the macro level to see how reality of location and motion exists and yet is nearly impossible to resolve because of the near infinite number of variables that affect the light over great distances. That reinforces Einstein's view of reality at the quantum level and says that the quantum particle actually could have both characteristics, a real location and real momentum even if unobserved.
First off, the word is "straight" and not "strait." Usage of the wrong (or misspelled) word aside, your thinking is seriously flawed. Unless photons pass VERY close to a strong gravitity well, their path is most certainly straight. There is no evidence or accepted theory that states otherwise.
Yes that is true but thats on a local level, so you can be very certain and its easy to make gravity corrections when say for example the light only has to travel past one gravity well, like our sun. Im talking about 10 billion light years of distance, where a vast amount of unknown affects are imparted on the light. Some even sucked up by black holes, some affected by gravitational lensing and light can also be split. With the Shapiro affect, the further the distance an object is from the observer the further the light is affected as it travels greater distances. We could call this the "Universal Scale Uncertainty principle" If it is shown that light becomes more red shifted due to the Shapiro affect this could well explain why star light from far away galaxies become more red shifted than say a universe that was not expanding. Further even more uncertainty is added when you consider earths orbits and our stars orbit and our galaxies orbit and an unknown orbit, then you can also apply the unknown orbits of the galaxy being detected. For example Galaxy IOK-1 is 12.88 billion light years away from Earth , light at these distance have a red shift of nearly 7. According to BBT that is ~780 million years after the big bang. I personly don't asume the earth is the centre of the universe but is observer dependant, our current telescope technology strangly enough has a field of view roughly up to 13 billion years. Coinsidence that the universe is 13 billion years old? I speculate that rather than nothing existing past 13 billion light years, that the lights wavelength becomes so long that interferrence makes it nearly impossible to detect ie becomes part of the CMB. All this incoming radiation is the cause of the CMB at ~2.7 K too. WHich why detecting galaxies at 12.88 is so uncommon, ie only one or two has been found. BBT suggests that only a few can be found simply because there wasn't many around at that time. Seems like a flat earth theory where your field of veiw limmited your observations and it was thought you would fall of the edge of the earth into nothing or an abiss for this was as far as you could see.
Gravity is a weak force. Electromagnetism is billions of times stronger. All it takes is a tiny magnet to totally overwhelm gravity. Gravity is a pathetic.
Can this be tested with any accuracy by using the Sun perhaps and some stars in the space field surrounding it?
Shapiro effect. cheack this out, gravity causes radar and radio waves to slow/delay and also a doppler effect towards a red shift according to this site. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! http://www.geocities.com/newastronomy/animate.htm
Very interesting. Hope you don't mind more mental probing. Now the influence of mass on spacetime, does it really stretch it or, and I'm trying to visualize this, does spacetime have some sort of compaction property(wrong words I'm sure) to it. Since gravity is pulling from all sides of an object I see a greater crunching of spacetime at the object's surface than say farther out. Or is spacetime merely going around the object like water surrounding a swimming fish?
