“What’s Albert doing with the flashlight and sweeper?”
“He’s studying light in a vacuum.”
Spacetime reveals itself in Einstein ring gravitational lenses, funhouse-mirror-like distortions of distant galaxies whose light must pass by intervening galaxies. The light bends, warps, refracts. Sometimes a galaxy will appear as four copies of itself; sometimes as a semicircular, lenticular slice of light; and sometimes like a full ring around the closer galaxy.* Gravitational lensing is an interesting phenomenon at the very least. That it operates in our universe is a cause for a thinking pause.
“What did one photon say to a companion photon as they passed a barred galaxy?”
“?”
“Let’s go on a bender.”
“?”
“Barred. Get it? Bar, bender…oh! never mind.”
Fortunately, Einstein’s explanation for the bending of light preceded the images captured by ever-more-powerful telescopes like the Hubble. Had we no knowledge of spacetime effects on light, we would be scratching our heads when we see all those distant distorted shapes ringing other galaxies. Thanks to his insights, we had in our knowledge base the potential to grasp what we saw indirectly: Distant galaxies hidden behind other galaxies and revealed only through a lens created by those relatively closer galaxies. In other words, we knew after Eddington proved Einstein was correct that the spacetime effects of closer galaxies determine how and what we see.
“What’s Albert doing with his summer vacation photos?”
“He’s sorting them to show us only what he wants us to see.”
Every time we see something or someone indirectly, that is, through others’ eyes, we might consider that there is a psychological or sociological analog to spacetime light-warping. When others report on what they see but we can’t see, assume there’s a bending of some sort, a distortion of some sort, maybe an exaggeration, maybe a dismissive diminution. What you see is often bent by the lens of an intervening person.
“Why is Albert weighing his Hubble images?”
“He’s trying to determine the mass of galaxies.”
“?”
“Well, then, when he knows what how much mass they have, he knows to what extent they distort galaxies we can’t directly see.”
And on Earth in the absence of a direct line of sight, the weight of others’ opinions often determines perception.
* https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/tAnpNyACfZ2xyWX3WrNwjA-970-80.jpg Numerous images that show gravitational lensing are available online.
“He’s studying light in a vacuum.”
Spacetime reveals itself in Einstein ring gravitational lenses, funhouse-mirror-like distortions of distant galaxies whose light must pass by intervening galaxies. The light bends, warps, refracts. Sometimes a galaxy will appear as four copies of itself; sometimes as a semicircular, lenticular slice of light; and sometimes like a full ring around the closer galaxy.* Gravitational lensing is an interesting phenomenon at the very least. That it operates in our universe is a cause for a thinking pause.
“What did one photon say to a companion photon as they passed a barred galaxy?”
“?”
“Let’s go on a bender.”
“?”
“Barred. Get it? Bar, bender…oh! never mind.”
Fortunately, Einstein’s explanation for the bending of light preceded the images captured by ever-more-powerful telescopes like the Hubble. Had we no knowledge of spacetime effects on light, we would be scratching our heads when we see all those distant distorted shapes ringing other galaxies. Thanks to his insights, we had in our knowledge base the potential to grasp what we saw indirectly: Distant galaxies hidden behind other galaxies and revealed only through a lens created by those relatively closer galaxies. In other words, we knew after Eddington proved Einstein was correct that the spacetime effects of closer galaxies determine how and what we see.
“What’s Albert doing with his summer vacation photos?”
“He’s sorting them to show us only what he wants us to see.”
Every time we see something or someone indirectly, that is, through others’ eyes, we might consider that there is a psychological or sociological analog to spacetime light-warping. When others report on what they see but we can’t see, assume there’s a bending of some sort, a distortion of some sort, maybe an exaggeration, maybe a dismissive diminution. What you see is often bent by the lens of an intervening person.
“Why is Albert weighing his Hubble images?”
“He’s trying to determine the mass of galaxies.”
“?”
“Well, then, when he knows what how much mass they have, he knows to what extent they distort galaxies we can’t directly see.”
And on Earth in the absence of a direct line of sight, the weight of others’ opinions often determines perception.
* https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/tAnpNyACfZ2xyWX3WrNwjA-970-80.jpg Numerous images that show gravitational lensing are available online.
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