Light Deflects as per Newton, Not as per Einstein

Dec 27, 2022
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James Hartle, p. 113: "Light falls in a gravitational field with the same acceleration as material bodies." https://www.amazon.com/Gravity-Introduction-Einsteins-General-Relativity/dp/0805386629

"To see WHY A DEFLECTION OF LIGHT WOULD BE EXPECTED, consider Figure 2-17, which shows a beam of light entering an accelerating compartment. Successive positions of the compartment are shown at equal time intervals. Because the compartment is accelerating, the distance it moves in each time interval increases with time. The path of the beam of light, as observed from inside the compartment, is therefore a parabola. But according to the equivalence principle, there is no way to distinguish between an accelerating compartment and one with uniform velocity in a uniform gravitational field. We conclude, therefore, that A BEAM OF LIGHT WILL ACCELERATE IN A GRAVITATIONAL FIELD AS DO OBJECTS WITH REST MASS. For example, near the surface of Earth light will fall with acceleration 9.8 m/s^2." http://web.pdx.edu/~pmoeck/books/Tipler_Llewellyn.pdf

What can be clearer than that? Light falls as per Newton and, accordingly, deflects as per Newton. The problem is that an ideology cannot be based on simple truths extracted from simple experiments, like the accelerating-compartment experiment. Ideologues prefer complicated, confusing, sloppy and, if possible, unrepeatable experiments able to "confirm" any falsehood. In such cases a wrong or fraudulent experimental result cannot be unequivocally rejected and replaced with the truth. Criticism may sound harsh but is actually toothless:

Sabine Hossenfelder: "As light carries energy and is thus subject of gravitational attraction, a ray of light passing by a massive body should be slightly bent towards it. This is so both in Newton's theory of gravity and in Einstein's, but Einstein's deflection is by a factor two larger than Newton's...As history has it, Eddington's original data actually wasn't good enough to make that claim with certainty. His measurements had huge error bars due to bad weather and he also might have cherry-picked his data because he liked Einstein's theory a little too much. Shame on him." http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2015/04/a-wonderful-100th-anniversary-gift-for.html

Michael Brooks: "That's what the astronomer Arthur Eddington did in 1919 when he cherry-picked among his observations of an eclipse. The idea was to prove Einstein's general theory of relativity. However, Eddington's analysis of the data was questionable enough for the Nobel Prize committee to exclude relativity from Einstein's 1921 Nobel Prize for physics. Assessing the merits of relativity was impossible until it was "confirmed in the future," the committee said." https://www.huffpost.com/entry/scientists-behaving-badly_b_1448729

Frederick Soddy, An Address to the fourth Conference of Nobel Prizewinners at Lindau (Bodensee), S. Germany, 30.VI.1954: "Incidentally the attempt to verify this during a recent solar eclipse, provided the world with the most disgusting spectacle perhaps ever witnessed of the lengths to which a preconceived notion can bias what was supposed to be an impartial scientific inquiry. For Eddington, who was one of the party, and ought to have been excluded as an ardent supporter of the theory that was under examination, in his description spoke of the feeling of dismay which ran through the expedition when it appeared at one time that Einstein might be wrong! Remembering that in this particular astronomical investigation, the corrections for the normal errors of observation - due to diffraction, temperature changes, and the like - exceeded by many times the magnitude of the predicted deflection of the star's ray being looked for, one wonders exactly what this sort of "science" is really worth." http://www.reformation.edu/scripture-science-stott/aarch/pages/10-soddy-to-nobel-prizewinners.htm

"This paper investigates an alternative possibility: that the critics were right and that the success of Einstein's theory in overcoming them was due to its strengths as an ideology rather than as a science. The clock paradox illustrates how relativity theory does indeed contain inconsistencies that make it scientifically problematic. These same inconsistencies, however, make the theory ideologically powerful...The gatekeepers of professional physics in the universities and research institutes are disinclined to support or employ anyone who raises problems over the elementary inconsistencies of relativity. A winnowing out process has made it very difficult for critics of Einstein to achieve or maintain professional status. Relativists are then able to use the argument of authority to discredit these critics. Were relativists to admit that Einstein may have made a series of elementary logical errors, they would be faced with the embarrassing question of why this had not been noticed earlier. Under these circumstances the marginalisation of antirelativists, unjustified on scientific grounds, is eminently justifiable on grounds of realpolitik. Supporters of relativity theory have protected both the theory and their own reputations by shutting their opponents out of professional discourse...The triumph of relativity theory represents the triumph of ideology not only in the profession of physics bur also in the philosophy of science." Peter Hayes, The Ideology of Relativity: The Case of the Clock Paradox https://tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02691720902741399
 
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Kip Thorne: Newton's theory predicted no deflection:

"A second crucial proof of the breakdown in Newtonian gravity was the relativistic bending of light. Einstein's theory predicted that starlight passing near the limb of the sun should be deflected by 1.75 seconds of arc, whereas NEWTON'S LAW PREDICTED NO DEFLECTION. Observations during the 1919 eclipse of the sun in Brazil, carried out by Sir Arthur Eddington and his British colleagues, brilliantly confirmed Einstein's prediction to an accuracy of about 20 percent. This dealt the final death blow to Newton's law and to most other relativistic theories of gravity." http://commons.erau.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3169&context=space-congress-proceedings

Sabine Hossenfelder: Newton's theory did predict deflection:

"As light carries energy and is thus subject of gravitational attraction, a ray of light passing by a massive body should be slightly bent towards it. This is so both in Newton's theory of gravity and in Einstein's, but Einstein's deflection is by a factor two larger than Newton's...Eddington's original data actually wasn't good enough to make that claim with certainty. His measurements had huge error bars due to bad weather and he also might have cherry-picked his data because he liked Einstein's theory a little too much. Shame on him." http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2015/04/a-wonderful-100th-anniversary-gift-for.html

Post-truth scientists: Who cares?
 
Dec 27, 2022
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Science: "Light from a background star is deflected by the gravitational field of the Sun. This effect was used in 1919 to provide some of the first evidence for general relativity. Sahu et al. applied the concept to another star: a nearby white dwarf called Stein 2051 B, which passed close in front of a more distant normal star (see the Perspective by Oswalt). The authors measured the tiny shifts in the apparent position of the background star, an effect called astrometric microlensing. The apparent motion matched the predictions of general relativity, which allowed the authors to determine the mass of the white dwarf." http://science.sciencemag.org/content/356/6342/1046.full

The statement

"The apparent motion matched the predictions of general relativity"

is a blatant lie. Newton's theory also predicts "tiny shifts", and in order to be able to find out which prediction - Newton's or Einstein's - is correct, one must know, IN ADVANCE, the mass of the "massive object", its precise geometry, and the precise distribution of the mass within this geometry. Such knowledge is only available when the "massive object" is the Sun, and even in this case things are by no means certain:

"After He Said Einstein Was Wrong, Physicist Henry Hill Learned That Fame's Benefits Are Relative...A major proof of Einstein's theory involved a peculiarity in the planet Mercury's orbit, which he attributed to the distortion of space created by the great mass of the sun. Central to the proof was an assumption that the sun is perfectly spherical. But Hill's observations showed that the sun is not perfectly round, a discrepancy that Hill has said may be "Achilles tendon of the general theory." http://people.com/archive/after-he-...that-fames-benefits-are-relative-vol-18-no-10

Sahu et al's fraud was published in countless journals worldwide - not even a hint at the simple objection that, since the authors did not know the mass of the white dwarf in advance, they were unable to discriminate between the Newtonian and the Einsteinian prediction and therefore their observation did not confirm general relativity:

Nature: "The Hubble Space Telescope has spotted light bending because of the gravity of a nearby white dwarf star - the first time astronomers have seen this type of distortion around a star other than the Sun. The finding once again confirms Einstein's general theory of relativity." http://www.nature.com/news/hubble-sees-light-bending-around-nearby-star-1.22108

A single fraud is easy to expose, but the Einstein Cult has been producing fraudulent "confirmations" of Einstein's relativity for more than a century and critics have to clean up Augean stables. No matter how many frauds you have exposed, you end up buried under Einsteinian excreta. Yet sometimes even hopeless battles should be fought.
 

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