Interference vs. Lensing

[AbnormallyHonest]

So we believe that gravity absolutely bends light? Could there not be another explaination?

Below are some classic examples of gravitational lensing that we acknowledge as validating relativity.

Further below is an example of a circular interference pattern.

Is the light "bending" or could it be that the direct line of sight to the light is being blocked?

Which one is less speculative?

Looking through a magnifying "lens" the images never resemble the "lensing" effect in the photos.

[Strange]

34 minutes ago, AbnormallyHonest said:

So we believe that gravity absolutely bends light? Could there not be another explaination?

Can you calculate the effect of your "other explanation" and show that it matches what we observe?

34 minutes ago, AbnormallyHonest said:

Is the light "bending" or could it be that the direct line of sight to the light is being blocked?

If the direct line of site were blocked, how could we see it? (Keyword: eclipse)

54 minutes ago, AbnormallyHonest said:

Which one is less speculative?

The one that has no math or experimental results supporting it.

55 minutes ago, AbnormallyHonest said:

Looking through a magnifying "lens" the images never resemble the "lensing" effect in the photos.

Because the are totally different effects. (It can look a bit like the effect of looking through glass with bubbles in, though.)

[swansont]

1 hour ago, AbnormallyHonest said:

Further below is an example of a circular interference pattern.

Show how it could be interference.

[beecee]

2 hours ago, AbnormallyHonest said:

So we believe that gravity absolutely bends light? Could there not be another explaination?

Below are some classic examples of gravitational lensing that we acknowledge as validating relativity.

Further below is an example of a circular interference pattern.

Is the light "bending" or could it be that the direct line of sight to the light is being blocked?

Which one is less speculative?

Looking through a magnifying "lens" the images never resemble the "lensing" effect in the photos.

Gravitational lensing a long held prediction of Einsteins GR, has been validated many times despite your obvious doubt. The first was in 1919 during a total solar eclipse, and the observations of a star by Arthur Eddington. 

All gravitational lensing is by the way, is the observation of light following geodesics, or the shortest route between two points in curved/warped spacetime.

Gravitational lensing was actually the first validated prediction of GR and is a totally robust theory without any real alternative interpretation. Your "light being blocked"reasoning seems rather contrived and illogical for many reasons.

There is by the way another small effect of Newtonian refraction which is also always considered and calculated.

Edited September 11, 2017 by beecee

[Strange]

That's a good point. If the OP has an alternative explanation for gravitational lensing, then that means GR is wrong and he also needs to come up with alternative explanations for the way gravity works (e.g. the precession of Mercury), gravitational time dilation, frame dragging, the expansion of space, gravitational waves, black holes, the Shapiro effect, and on and on ...

[Tub]

11 minutes ago, beecee said:

 

All gravitational lensing is by the way, is the observation of light following geodesics, or the shortest route between two points in curved/warped spacetime.

 

 

17 minutes ago, Strange said:

That's a good point. If the OP has an alternative explanation for gravitational lensing, then that means GR is wrong and he also needs to come up with alternative explanations for the way gravity works (e.g. the precession of Mercury), gravitational time dilation, frame dragging, the expansion of space, gravitational waves, black holes, the Shapiro effect, and on and on ...

Could gravitational lensing be the same effect as described by Fermat's principle, or by refraction, as both describe the deflection of light passing from one medium to another of a different density?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat's_principle

P.S. I'm sure you both don't need the link but someone else like myself might.

[Strange]

It can't be explained by refraction because that causes dispersion. (And you would have the problem of having to replace GR.)

[swansont]

14 minutes ago, Tub said:

Could gravitational lensing be the same effect as described by Fermat's principle, or by refraction, as both describe the deflection of light passing from one medium to another of a different density?

Could it be? Possibly. But as with the previous claim of diffraction, you can calculate the conditions under which it would occur, and then rule them out. These are fairly well-understood phenomena.  

[Tub]

Just now, Strange said:

It can't be explained by refraction because that causes dispersion. (And you would have the problem of having to replace GR.)

 

Just now, swansont said:

Could it be? Sure. But as with the previous claim of diffraction, you can calculate the conditions under which it would ocur. These are fairly well-understood phenomena.  

Thank you both. May i also ask, is it possible that light from a very distant source could be affected so many times by lensing ( a sort of slalom effect ) that it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to trace that light back to its source?

[Strange]

2 minutes ago, Tub said:

 

Thank you both. May i also ask, is it possible that light from a very distant source could be affected so many times by lensing ( a sort of slalom effect ) that it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to trace that light back to its source?

Gravitation lensing is quite unusual and a small effect so it is usually pretty obvious. There might be the odd photon that gets deflected in a long path past multiple galaxies, but it seems pretty unlikely. Here is a nice example of predicting exactly what lensing effect to expect: https://cosmosmagazine.com/space/supernova-deja-vu-all-over-again 

 

[AbnormallyHonest]

2 hours ago, Strange said:

Can you calculate the effect of your "other explanation" and show that it matches what we observe?

If the direct line of site were blocked, how could we see it? (Keyword: eclipse)

The one that has no math or experimental results supporting it.

Because the are totally different effects. (It can look a bit like the effect of looking through glass with bubbles in, though.)

There is one that has no math or experimental results supporting it... and it's not circular interference. I would say that relativity is the "other explanation" which requires the idea of "dark matter" just to make it fit. On the other hand, interference patterns can be experimentally validated right here on Earth, and can be replicated anywhere... it does not require the chance occurrence of some very unique celestial coincidences and the inclusion of some speculative stuff that we do not yet even have a concept of.

I'm not implying that it explains every visual coincidence we observe, but it might offer another explanation that can be recreated here in a lab without including anything speculative.

[Tub]

16 minutes ago, Strange said:

Gravitation lensing is quite unusual and a small effect so it is usually pretty obvious. There might be the odd photon that gets deflected in a long path past multiple galaxies, but it seems pretty unlikely. Here is a nice example of predicting exactly what lensing effect to expect: https://cosmosmagazine.com/space/supernova-deja-vu-all-over-again 

 

Thanks again - especially for the great link.

[AbnormallyHonest]

1 hour ago, swansont said:

Show how it could be interference.

Have you ever heard of a conoscopic interference pattern? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conoscopic_interference_pattern) It's a type of spectrographic analysis of minerals, something I've just discovered myself, but I believe it is relevant. Unfortunately, I don't have a lab, but if you were to take a double slit interference pattern and rotate the slits around the center point of where the light makes contact with the slits, you'd end up with a very similar pattern.

[swansont]

25 minutes ago, AbnormallyHonest said:

There is one that has no math or experimental results supporting it... and it's not circular interference. I would say that relativity is the "other explanation" which requires the idea of "dark matter" just to make it fit. On the other hand, interference patterns can be experimentally validated right here on Earth, and can be replicated anywhere... it does not require the chance occurrence of some very unique celestial coincidences and the inclusion of some speculative stuff that we do not yet even have a concept of.

I'm not implying that it explains every visual coincidence we observe, but it might offer another explanation that can be recreated here in a lab without including anything speculative.

Dark matter has other lines of evidence supporting its existence. It would not be invoked in lensing of there was some other, more mundane, explanation, that fit.

10 minutes ago, AbnormallyHonest said:

Have you ever heard of a conoscopic interference pattern? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conoscopic_interference_pattern) It's a type of spectrographic analysis of minerals, something I've just discovered myself, but I believe it is relevant. Unfortunately, I don't have a lab, but if you were to take a double slit interference pattern and rotate the slits around the center point of where the light makes contact with the slits, you'd end up with a very similar pattern.

So we're going from material that can give a diffraction pattern (which you have yet to support with any rigor) to claiming birefringence...with no support.

What I was looking for was a calculation on your part to show that this was even a remote possibility. You know, some actual science.

[AbnormallyHonest]

1 hour ago, beecee said:

Gravitational lensing a long held prediction of Einsteins GR, has been validated many times despite your obvious doubt. The first was in 1919 during a total solar eclipse, and the observations of a star by Arthur Eddington. 

All gravitational lensing is by the way, is the observation of light following geodesics, or the shortest route between two points in curved/warped spacetime.

Gravitational lensing was actually the first validated prediction of GR and is a totally robust theory without any real alternative interpretation. Your "light being blocked"reasoning seems rather contrived and illogical for many reasons.

There is by the way another small effect of Newtonian refraction which is also always considered and calculated.

well actually, interference would be the shortest distance between two points without a direct line of sight. It doesn't require curvature. Also, seeing an object where it doesn't have direct line of sight doesn't mean that it has resonance, the "pattern" we see is merely due to probability that a single photon will likely end up here due to the overlap of the distribution between the two focal points. The photons are actually fired one at a time and don't resonate with anything other than probability.

Yes, but if I predicted that 2(_)2=4 aren't there two solutions that work. If I added 2(_)3=6 you might get a better picture. Or would I say that it was supposed to be 8 but dark order of operations must be preventing it from growing past 6?

[swansont]

14 minutes ago, AbnormallyHonest said:

well actually, interference would be the shortest distance between two points without a direct line of sight. It doesn't require curvature. Also, seeing an object where it doesn't have direct line of sight doesn't mean that it has resonance, the "pattern" we see is merely due to probability that a single photon will likely end up here due to the overlap of the distribution between the two focal points. The photons are actually fired one at a time and don't resonate with anything other than probability.

Yes, but if I predicted that 2(_)2=4 aren't there two solutions that work. If I added 2(_)3=6 you might get a better picture. Or would I say that it was supposed to be 8 but dark order of operations must be preventing it from growing past 6?

How about actually using the diffraction formula to explain this, rather than making crap up?

[Strange]

1 hour ago, AbnormallyHonest said:

There is one that has no math or experimental results supporting it... and it's not circular interference.

Great! Then shows us your calculations and how well the results match observation.

On the other hand, GR can calculate the degree of gravitational lensing and it matches observations. 

Quote

I would say that relativity is the "other explanation" which requires the idea of "dark matter" just to make it fit.

What does dark matter have to do with it? Apart from the fact we can detect dark matter by using gravitational lensing. How would something that doesn't interact with light case an interference pattern?

Quote

I'm not implying that it explains every visual coincidence we observe, but it might offer another explanation that can be recreated here in a lab without including anything speculative.

There is nothing speculative about GR as an explanation for GR.

And unless you can present your maths, your idea is not even speculation. It is just a wild guess.

[beecee]

9 hours ago, AbnormallyHonest said:

well actually, interference would be the shortest distance between two points without a direct line of sight. It doesn't require curvature. Also, seeing an object where it doesn't have direct line of sight doesn't mean that it has resonance, the "pattern" we see is merely due to probability that a single photon will likely end up here due to the overlap of the distribution between the two focal points. The photons are actually fired one at a time and don't resonate with anything other than probability.

Yes, but if I predicted that 2(_)2=4 aren't there two solutions that work. If I added 2(_)3=6 you might get a better picture. Or would I say that it was supposed to be 8 but dark order of operations must be preventing it from growing past 6?

Wow!  You certainly seem to have an aversion to real science and scientific methodology, and a penchant towards nonsense bordering on gobbledigook.  

[John Cuthber]

Meanwhile, back in the world of science.

Diffraction is wavelength dependent, so, if they were diffraction patterns they would be coloured.

 

They aren't nice pretty rainbows, so they aren't diffraction patterns.

[Mordred]

4 hours ago, John Cuthber said:

Meanwhile, back in the world of science.

 

Lol,

[AbnormallyHonest]

On 9/11/2017 at 6:34 AM, Tub said:

 

Could gravitational lensing be the same effect as described by Fermat's principle, or by refraction, as both describe the deflection of light passing from one medium to another of a different density?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat's_principle

P.S. I'm sure you both don't need the link but someone else like myself might.

Yes, this is true, for light traveling through varying densities, because it changes the the speed the light travels through it. Since energy is a field, it doesn't all enter the change in medium at the same time (from our perception) so we perceive it as a shift in the light. (e.g. a pencil in a glass of water)

The speed of light in a vacuum is constant. There is no changing medium, which would mean no alteration in velocity, therefore this principle doesn't really have any relevance to gravitational lensing. 

On 9/11/2017 at 8:06 AM, swansont said:

How about actually using the diffraction formula to explain this, rather than making crap up?

I'm not making crap up anymore than anyone else who uses speculation to dismiss speculation. Yes, I am aware that there are widely accepted concepts to logically rationalize observation, and some of those have extrapolated to make predictions, but does that mean that it is actually a reality, or just a very intuitive concept? Believing a concept is the reality is a disability of progress.

The table I'm using to type on feels solid to me, but isn't matter mostly just space and fields of energy? So which is the reality and which is a speculative concept? I'm no more making crap up than anyone else.

Science has many definitions, but to me, it is the promotion of discovery through progressive insightful concepts that seek the truth of reality, not rigidly clinging to concepts that didn't have all the information and can't explain everything. If new ideas weren't scientific, then we'd still be in the stone age. I'm not looking to convince people that I'm absolutely correct, I'm looking for help, which is what I thought this forum was for.

Diffraction formula doesn't apply, because the diffraction occurs in the field, not the angle or direction of the light. What does change is the amount of time it takes for the light to arrive, but since we see it arriving all at once, we see portions of the same image stretched across more time. Gravity could be bending space, which shifts the direction of the light, or the field could just be gaining a new focal point, causing our view of the angular diameter to be arriving with different travel times, which distorts our view of things. We perceive an object as a whole with the light arriving together, but really we're just seeing a field that is composed of light from differing times.

Edited September 14, 2017 by AbnormallyHonest

[swansont]

18 minutes ago, AbnormallyHonest said:

 I'm not making crap up anymore than anyone else who uses speculation to dismiss speculation.  

The people dismissing this are using well-established science to do so.

[AbnormallyHonest]

On 9/11/2017 at 10:14 PM, Mordred said:

Lol,

Thank you, for the links.

17 minutes ago, swansont said:

The people dismissing this are using well-established science to do so.

Yeah, and I wonder if there are any scientists that have ever done that before?

On 9/11/2017 at 6:04 AM, Strange said:

That's a good point. If the OP has an alternative explanation for gravitational lensing, then that means GR is wrong and he also needs to come up with alternative explanations for the way gravity works (e.g. the precession of Mercury), gravitational time dilation, frame dragging, the expansion of space, gravitational waves, black holes, the Shapiro effect, and on and on ...

Who said anything about gravity? Actually I'm offering a solution so no one needs to come up with an alternate explanation for gravity, because what if there is no "dark" matter? What happens to relativity then?

Edited September 14, 2017 by AbnormallyHonest

[beecee]

32 minutes ago, AbnormallyHonest said:

The table I'm using to type on feels solid to me, but isn't matter mostly just space and fields of energy? So which is the reality and which is a speculative concept? I'm no more making crap up than anyone else.

Your table is solid from your scale of perspective. But if you could shrink yourself down to the size of a  proton, you would witness the electron repulsion that actually stops your hand falling through the table. They are both real situations and not unsupported crap that you do seem to make up quite often.

Quote

Science has many definitions, but to me, it is the promotion of discovery through progressive insightful concepts that seek the truth of reality, not rigidly clinging to concepts that didn't have all the information and can't explain everything. If new ideas weren't scientific, then we'd still be in the stone age. I'm not looking to convince people that I'm absolutely correct, I'm looking for help, which is what I thought this forum was for.

Science does not actually seek reality: It constructs models that describe and match the observational and experimental data that we have. If it happens to hit on this "reality"all well and good. Here is a short video: I hope you take the time to watch it and understand what I mean...... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO0r930Sn_8

 

 

 

[AbnormallyHonest]

On 9/11/2017 at 5:45 PM, John Cuthber said:

Meanwhile, back in the world of science.

Diffraction is wavelength dependent, so, if they were diffraction patterns they would be coloured.

 

They aren't nice pretty rainbows, so they aren't diffraction patterns.

Well, I would agree with you, but the diffraction patters are due to the different wavelengths of light, which all enter a changing medium differently causing disparity in the angles of diffraction for varying colors. This isn't the case with gravitational lensing, because there is no change in medium and therefore none in velocity. If you check out TUB's post there's a link to Fermat's Principle which helps explain this.

Edited September 14, 2017 by AbnormallyHonest