Can gravity bend light?
Theory of relativity
Can gravity bend light?
Imagine you're standing on a beach, looking at the sun setting. You see the sun's position change slightly as it moves behind a cloud, even though the cloud moves.
Albert Einstein's theory suggests that massive objects like the sun can warp the fabric of space itself, causing light to bend around them. This bending of light is what we see as the sun appearing to shift position.
Example
If you measure the angle of the sun's apparent shift as it passes behind the cloud, it's a tiny change, but it's consistent with light bending around a massive object.
Remember this
The bending of light by gravity helps explain why light from distant stars can curve around massive objects like galaxies, rather than following a straight path.
Text adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
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Light bent by the Sun confirmed Einstein's predictions
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Special relativity
Albert Einstein's special relativity paper introduced time dilation
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