ABOUT TIME TO CONFRONT THE CONFIRMATION OF THE GENERAL THEORY OF RELATIVITY
Here is Rich Hochstim’s answer about the difference between gravity and wrap spacetime:
“The lines on the sheet are the geodesics:
they curve in response to an object. This prediction has been spectacularly confirmed:
What you are seeing here is four images of a single quasar. The quasar is (from Earth’s perspective) behind the central foreground galaxy, Huchra’s lens (the image in the center of the cross). The gravitational field of the foreground galaxy bends the light from the quasar, so we see four images of the same quasar, fairly dramatic proof that gravitation is the bending of spacetime.”
Here’s my comment:
“This prediction has been spectacularly confirmed”
Yes! But using the theory that explains it.
Indeed, if one believes the Earth to be fixed at the center of the universe and uses Ptolemy’s epicycles to explain the recession of the planets, one will have the theory “spectacularly confirmed” every time one plot on paper observations of the planets’ movements, even if the explanation is wrong. (See Popper).
Here is another explanation of the bending of the light by the sun when it passes through its corona:
If the solar corona produces an atmosphere thick enough to bend light, the bending could be caused by it, like it is here on Earth:
These depictions are indeed “spectacularly” similar.
They would be significant if the solar corona is thick enough to diffract light and if galaxies have “atmospheres.” But I have never checked on that.
I don’t say that I am right, but it would be another way to explain the bending of the light by massive objects having atmospheres.
NB I just checked in Google (Our collective memory) by typing: “corona density compared to earth atmosphere” the answer:
“There are only about 10 ⁹ atoms per cubic centimeter, compared with about 10¹⁹ atoms per cubic centimeter in the upper photosphere.”
Is it enough? You tell me!
Edit:
I forgot to mention that the same phenomenon could explain the “quasar effect” if galaxies too have atmospheres. …Far fetch? Why not. Galaxies are agglomerations of matter like the planets and the stars.
