Re: Bending of light not well authenticated

"Koobee Wublee" <kublai@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:Tmfie.25$ep.21@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> ...you seem to claim to be able to observe a light beam being bent
> as it travels near an accelerated frame. When you receive or
> observe a photon directly, there is no way to find out how many
> times or how this photon has been deflected. The deflection can
> only be determined through indirect means, and you can never be
> able to observe the bent path of the photon.

Alright. Lots of detail in your reply, and I can't address all of it
right now. But let's start with this above paragraph if you care to
continue, because I think visualization of the deflection is important
to intuitive understanding of the process.

Yes, I am saying light beams in flat space appear bent when examined
from an accelerating frame.

And let's stick to classical light beams or rays, and not individual
photons, because as you say, you really can't track an individual
photon without absorbing it, and once absorbed, there's no tracking it.

So here is our thought experiment set up.

In deep flat space, a free floating spacecraft has two glass sides, and
a glass wall in the middle. A companion ship agrees to shine a laser
pulse at the ship.

An observer inside sees a ray cross from one window to another. Marking
the entry point and the middle point and the exit point, finds the ray
makes a straight and level transition from side to side. No surprizes,
very intuitive.

ASCII diagram here:

---------1--------2--------3-------->

beam passes into ship through window at point x=1, through middle glass
at point x=2 and out far window at x=3.

A second run is made, and this time, the first ship gets up some
constant speed and again passes by the second in free float, when the
second ship again fires the laser pulse, which passes through the first
ship making a straight trnasition from side to side, but from the point
of view of the first ship, goes at an angle, due to its constant
relative velocity.

ASCII diagram here:

----
----
1
----
----
2
----
----
3
----
---->

A third run is made, but this time, the first ship sits again at rest
across from the second ship, but just as the second ship again fires the
laser pulse, the first fires its rockets with as much force as possible
and is just undergoing a constant acceleration as the pulse passes
through the first ship.

ASCII diagram here:

--------1
--------2
----
----3
--
->

Look at that! While the second ship sees the light making a straight
line according to their perspective, the first ship under constant
acceleration sees the beam not tracking a straight line, but appearing
to fall. How much they see the beam fall depends on how much they are
accelerating.

I hope it is intuitively obvious that the observers under acceleration
will see the path of light curved in the third example. And since the
light appears to be curved, we can reason that it also appears slowed,
because that's what happens when light is going from a faster media into
a slower one, it curves.

So do you have any problem with this gedanken. Do you dispute the
results? Do you find anything non-intuitive?

--
Randy M. Dumse

Caution: Objects in mirror are more confused than they appear.



.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: The Physical Reality of SpaceTime
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    (sci.physics.relativity)
  • Re: TVTropes Infodump page
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    (rec.arts.sf.written)
  • Re: how big?
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    (rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated)
  • Re: David Drake - Leary and the RCN
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    (rec.arts.sf.written)
  • Re: SRs velocity addition -- ANY Experimental Evidence?
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    (sci.physics)