Photons

How does gravity alter the trajectory of light?

yo nigga da gravity be all bendin tha spacetime and shit, changin da curvature so dem photons dont move in no straight line, nah mean?

>>2
african american

Well think that >>2 is write. But I have also different idea. But it is secret.

>>1
Good question, i have been taking three courses of quantum related subjects now, yet it has never come up. We even neglect the gravitational part in the hamiltonian frequently, let alone using time independent schrödinger equation. The mysteries behind gravitation hasn't been resolved quite yet( see CERN page for updates about Higgs boson) so it is early to give a definite answer. However i might speculate. Photons that are electromagnetic radiation interact with ordinary matter such as electrons if certain conditions are met. Now physics prohibit interbosonic interactions but gravity is not independent of matter. The gravitation field is affected by mass of a matter and matter can indirectly affect photons. May be there is a roundabout relation but i think bosons can interact, what is matter anyway? How a quark is different from a boson except for having fractional spin quantum number? The fundamental differences become ambiguous when you think thoroughly.

>>5
It's not too early to give a definite answer, you just don't know relativity

>>1
Particle/wave duality might make it easier to understand. A particle nature photon has infinitesimal mass, but it is a mass nevertheless so it would bend to the will of gravitation. But when it behaves as wave things become quite complicated. I can't really get into that, it is already too hard to imagine a wave like motion. A sine function graph may come to your mind but that is hardly anything like it. You follow a trajectory while fluctuating your electric and magnetic fields while having no mass and volume but a position...

>>6
No, until existence of Higgs boson is confirmed you cannot say for sure that gravitation occurs under influence of bosons or gravitation fields. I had my share of special relativity but those are just equations. Think about the corresponding real life cases of the math, gravity really has problems. I won't go in detail not to change subject but there is an issue with neglected constant energy loss.

photons don't exist. :/

morons, gravity doesn't bend spacetime, it IS the curvature of spacetime so the photons are like marbles rolling on a curved surface

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>>2
and
>>10
Correct. Relativity is the answer, here. Anything else is either wrong, baseless conjecture, or straight up bullshit. Gravity is merely the curvature of spacetime, OP.

I would highly recommend Brian Greene's books, particularly "The Fabric of the Cosmos". He does an excellent job at introducing people to the mind-bending theories of modern physics with a minimum of pain. I would even recommend his work over Hawking's.

Imagine spacetime as the net on a trampoline. When you stand on a trampoline, the net sags under your weight a bit. All objects with mass create pits like this in spacetime. Now imagine your friend standing next to the trampoline. He rolls a ball gently onto the trampoline. Eventually, that ball will hit you. If he angles it right, it might roll around a few times, but it will eventually fall into the pit you're making. If he rolls it hard enough, that ball could escape your pit and continue rolling off the trampoline, but its trajectory will likely be altered a bit.

Photons, like the ball, are not attracted to objects with mass. Not directly. Objects with mass alter the curvature of spacetime and the photons are simply following that curve. A photon continues to travel "straight", but the space it is traveling through becomes bent towards massive objects. "Gravity" is not a force per se, but refers to the fact that spacetime is curved by massive objects and the magnitude of that curvature.

It is so far unknown how exactly a massive object is able to affect spacetime. There are many so-called "theories", but the vast majority of them are pure conjecture (they make no predictions, are not falsifiable, no evidence to support them, usually merely clever mathematical frameworks, etc) and are thus not valid Scientific Theories.

As I point out often, our current understanding of the concepts of Space and Time are still laughably primitive. Some philosophers even question if our brains are even capable of fully understanding such things, let alone if it is physically possible to comprehend it. How do we expect to make meaningful progress in understanding the foundations of Time, if we can't even visualize something as simple as a few extra spatial dimensions?

>>5
What the fucking hell? You've either got incredibly shitty professors or you're a fucking dumbass. I would also recommend Brian Greene's books to you, as you seem to have somehow completely missed most of the fundamentals of modern physics. You, sir, boggle my fucking mind.

yeah right, I'd buy that for a dollar. :/

>>5
time independent schrödinger equation
lol, not a relativistic theory.  I've heard that it's possible to do QED on curved spacetime.

>>7
A particle nature photon has infinitesimal mass, but it is a mass nevertheless
Fail.  Though experiments only have an upper bound for the mass of a photon, theory requires an exactly massless photon.  Any nonzero mass means that you can boost to its rest frame, in which case you get 3 polarizations of light (I remember the fact that photons, as a spin 1 particle, only have 2 polarizations due to its being massless).

>>13
Popular science books have a tendency to neglect a significant portion of the mathematical structure of physics (surprise!).  I read his string theory book, but wasn't too impressed.  As far as I can decipher, relativistic strings do not seem like an ordinary classical string in any way.  Quantizing them then becomes a bear... ugh.  Admittedly, his book was better than Hawking's.  I read Universe in a Nutshell some time ago, and understood < 50% of it.  Now that I understand more of the mathematical structure, "ohh so that's what he meant by ___".

>>13
Sir you somehow have infinite confidence in yourself but i don't get what you base that on. Your relativity reference still doesn't explain how it distorts space/time curvature.

S shell electrons of certain elements like mercury gains mass. I know the formal answer, relativistic effects...The electron has to gain speed for avoiding falling into the highly dense charge center and at some point it exceeds half of speed of light, thus gaining mass. Explain to me how exactly this gaining mass part occurs.

All objects fall at the same rate, the spatial effects of gravity are unaffected by mass, so from the scientific perspective there is no reason to assume that photons would behave any differently, in fact they don't. They don't slow down because they have no mass, instead they change frequency, no big deal, that's just how photons roll. You not gonna stop them ballin, nigger.

^* African American

>>18
I posted nigger somewhere else in dis.4chan.org, see if you can find me. If not a nigger will remain un-african-american'd and racism will prevail.

>>16
Try to avoid using classical reasoning for describing quantum effects.  This is especially true when you throw in relativity.  It might work for the occasional phenomena, but it is almost certainly wrong in general.

The standard physics definition of mass is "rest mass".  "Relativistic mass" is rarely used these days, as it does not behave in the same way as Newtonian mass, nor does it affect gravity in the same was as Newtonian mass.

>>17-20
God damn it, go back to that one thread you guys were fagging up.  This is a rare thread that actually pertains to the subject of /sci/.
You're going to fag this thread up anyway because you're sand niggers

>>20
All objects fall at the same rate, the spatial effects of gravity are unaffected by mass, so from the scientific perspective there is no reason to assume that photons would behave any differently, in fact they don't. They don't slow down because they have no mass, instead they change frequency, no big deal, that's just how photons roll.*

There, nigger-free. Happy now?

>>21
no, u. :/

>>19
^* African American; sometimes can't get them all ;_; if I bothered with /prog/scrape I could find them all then.

>>21
^* African American

>>20
^*Sand African Americans