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Anonymous
Anonymous asked in Science & MathematicsAstronomy & Space · 1 decade ago

If light from a distant star passes close to a massive body, the light beam will?

a. accelerate due to gravity.

b. slow down.

c. bend towards the star due to gravity.

d. continue moving in a straight line.

e. change color to a shorter wavelength.

11 Answers

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  • Anonymous
    1 decade ago
    Favorite Answer

    Depending on your point of view, either C or D.

    You see... from the lights perspective, it is moving in a straight line. That's how light works. However, the space that it is moving through is being bent, so from our perspective we see it bending.

  • 1 decade ago

    Use the process of elimination. Light moves at constant speed, so that rules out a & b.

    Color shift is a Doppler effect that can tell if a star is moving towards you or away from you, like the rise in pitch of sound moving towards you or lower pitch moving away. The color shift you see at dawn or dusk is not due to gravity, it is due to refraction.

    A cathode ray tube (like an older TV) creates the image by bending an electron beam with magnets, so it is possible that enough gravitational force could bend light. A black hole has such strong gravity that it can suck in everything, including light.

  • Anonymous
    1 decade ago

    a. accelerate due to gravity.

    (speed of light is constant)

    b. slow down.

    (speed of light is constant)

    c. bend towards the star due to gravity.

    (this is the right answer)

    d. continue moving in a straight line.

    (no)

    e. change color to a shorter wavelength.

    (no)

  • 1 decade ago

    This is where Newtonian physics fails and relativity takes over. Gravity doesn't alter the path of light - instead it alters the curvature of space-time that the light passes through. The light never stops going "straight," so to speak. It is merely that its "straight" path appears curved in the Euclidian sense

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  • 1 decade ago

    c. bend towards the star due to gravity.

  • pozzi
    Lv 4
    5 years ago

    in accordance to Newton, gentle does no longer be tormented by passing on the brink of a huge physique. Newtong theorised gravity to be an eye-catching tension between 2 a lot. gentle has no mass, as a bring about Newton's concept isn't tormented by gravity. It grew to become into Einstein who theorised gravity as a curvature of area brought about with the aid of mass, and as a result that gentle may be tormented by gravity because of the fact the area it undergone grew to become distorted. when you consider that gentle is maximum rather tormented by gravity, as all of us understand from commentary, it sort of feels that Einstein's concept of gravity is a extra useful in high-quality condition for fact than Newton's. for many functional purposes, notwithstanding, Newton's concept and equations artwork ok, and that they seem to be a heck of a lot extra straightforward than einstein's, so they are nevertheless used and taught for his or her functional use.

  • 1 decade ago

    john -----

    about b

    light CAN slow down when in a medium..

    c (speed of light ) is only constant in a vacuum.

    in water it slows down. in the air it slows down, and in a Bose Einstein condensate it slows down ALOT.

    the answer is C bend due to gravity

  • Anonymous
    1 decade ago

    (C) It will bend (refract). This is what allows us to spot black holes. Obviously we couldn't spot black holes against a black background, so we have to look for the distortions. It's also the feature that allows for "gravitational lensing," a really cool universal effect than gives us a giant telescopic lens in galaxy to see things that none of our telescopes would otherwise see.

    Source(s): Geologist
  • 1 decade ago

    the light will bend around the object, so c

  • Anonymous
    1 decade ago

    C) Bend.

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