was the bending of light around the sun to prove Relativity really a refraction phenomena?

Question

Isnt the indexof refraction of the solar atmosphere =.707?

Answer 1

From the amount of the bending, I suppose you can calculate an effective refractive index. However, gravitational lensing is not a refractive phenomenon. (We reserve that designation for light propagating through a material).
-T

Answer 2

no it wasn't. This being said, in the first such experiment, which brought Einstein huge fame, big measurement errors were made and I believe errors also had been made in calculating the deviation of the light (the theory is quite complex to use), so that, strictly, the positive results didn't prove anything at the time.

But by the time people realised this, other experiments had been made, of a higher quality, that confirmed the predictions made by the theory.

Refraction could hardly produce that effect. Refraction in what?

Answer 3

In a way it was. The theory that gravitation would bend light waves in a predictable manner was proved during an eclipse by the apparent "move" of a distant star. Refraction is the bending of light that occurs when it passes from one medium to the another...air to glass to air, for instance. In this case the light did not move from the vacuum of space, but through a gravitational field.

Answer 4

there is the "straightforward" answer and the unfinished answer which no longer many people talk about. First, basically ignore about gravity for the on the spot to the volume that we pretend it would not exist. The try for when you're accelerating is to carry out a rock and enable bypass. If it strikes remote from you, you're accelerating. Now, in this gravityless universe all non-accelerating bodies (ie inertial stream surely) be conscious that each human being different non-accelerating bodies are shifting at consistent speeds. it truly is basically how that's. So the easy answer is, to objective who sped up and who did not, basically enable them shuttle with a rock floating at an hands length in the front of them, in some unspecified time sooner or later they're going to go away from the action of the rock. The not straightforward answer is to handle your question "is acceleration absolute?" because certainly it would want to look that its presence or absence _is_ absolute. area of this might want to be to do with conservation of means besides the undeniable fact that the not straightforward area is to outline the ingredient hostile to which acceleration takes position. curiously there are numerous open clinical and philosophical questions the following - a sturdy one is to think about that a rotating body which follows an inertial course will nevertheless adventure centrifugal stress, suggesting that inertia is operating hostile to some kind of reference body. besides the undeniable fact that, this comprehensive area isn't a lot stated and oftentimes people basically settle for that each human being inertial frames bypass at consistent speed wrt the different inertial body and that acceleration is deviation from an inertial body.

Answer 5

Nowadays the astronomers even take advantage of such "bending of light".
They discovered very massive objects which affect the path of the light in such a way that they behave in fact as galactic lenses, amplifying the images of what is behind.

Answer 6

Hi. No, it was to demonstrate that the sun's gravity bends space and the light traveling through that bent space bent as well.