Thread: A movie I watched awhile back" Eddington and Einstein ?" forgot exact title.

There was this thingie about proving that light bends. What resulted in the movie by what "test" they have done to prove it was to photograph during a solar eclipse in Africa. How many photographs, I don't know, for five minutes. To prove that they overlapped two slides or negatives from one point at the beginning of five minutes and the end. The planet Mercury has moved! So they have proved that light bends. But the doubt is that what could have happened is that both Mercury and The Sun were just slowly moving across the sky. I am not saying that light does not bend, just what happened instead what they thought what happened? And just so I do not open too many threads, let me post it in this space . I heard on a science program that the wave spectrum of "Visible Light" is just one film of a movie move reel extending from California to Alaska. The wave spectrum, that is. Since Empirical knowledge is based on our human limitations, and maybe machines and devices to assist. Just how controlled are you sure of experiments? There could be interferences that you could not be aware of. Another one, so I do not open too many threads. Doesn't include life and organisms but couldn't the Universe Be explained in simple terms of Solid,Liquid,Gas and Friction not in just Earth densities but in a much broader way. I figure I may be wrong very soon, but what do you think? Also just to see the other side, just keep drilling or scraping a smaller matter more slowly,and finer before you go through it. What is in the finer point between one side and the other?

I've never seen nor heard of this movie; but are you referring to the precession of Mercury?

Originally Posted by Perplexion

There was this thingie about proving that light bends. What resulted in the movie by what "test" they have done to prove it was to photograph during a solar eclipse in Africa. How many photographs, I don't know, for five minutes. To prove that they overlapped two slides or negatives from one point at the beginning of five minutes and the end. The planet Mercury has moved! So they have proved that light bends. But the doubt is that what could have happened is that both Mercury and The Sun were just slowly moving across the sky. I am not saying that light does not bend, just what happened instead what they thought what happened?

You seem to be mixing up two things here.

Firstly, the orbit of Mecury has been known for a long time to not exactly match the predictions of Newton's theory of gravity. This was one of the motivations for Einstein to extend his theory to explain gravity. His theory later predicted the correct value for the precession of Mercury.

Secondly, in 1919 Arthur Eddington organised the first experimental test of relativity. During an eclipse he took photographs and used these to check the position of various stars (the Hyades cluster, I think) that were close to the sun in the sky. The position of these was measured relative to other stars so the movement of the suna and stars (actually just the rotation of the earth, of course) doesn't matter.

There photographs were re-analysed more recently (in the 1970s I think) and confirmed the original results.

Apart from that, there have been thousands of other tests of relativity since then. They all confirm the theory to be accurate.

And just so I do not open too many threads, let me post it in this space . I heard on a science program that the wave spectrum of "Visible Light" is just one film of a movie move reel extending from California to Alaska.

I'm not quite sure what that was supposed to mean. Maybe a reference to the fact that visible light is just one tiny part of the entire electromagnetic spectrum?

Since Empirical knowledge is based on our human limitations, and maybe machines and devices to assist. Just how controlled are you sure of experiments? There could be interferences that you could not be aware of.

One of the important things in good experimental design is to try and think of any such effects which could change the result. You then design the experiment to eliminate those effects as far as possible. Also, other people will try and measure the same thing in different ways which will have different errors. Errors can never be completely removed so all scientific data has a margin of error associated with it.

Science never relies on a single result. It is all about repeatability and levels of confidence.

Doesn't include life and organisms but couldn't the Universe Be explained in simple terms of Solid,Liquid,Gas and Friction not in just Earth densities but in a much broader way. I figure I may be wrong very soon, but what do you think? Also just to see the other side, just keep drilling or scraping a smaller matter more slowly,and finer before you go through it. What is in the finer point between one side and the other?

Sorry, but I don't understand the question at all...

I was only vaguely aware of the 1919 experiment and wasn't aware that a lot of controversy had developed over it. There is a nice review article here: [0709.0685] Not Only Because of Theory: Dyson, Eddington and the Competing Myths of the 1919 Eclipse Expedition