(July 17, 2013 at 2:59 am)Godschild Wrote: Do you believe light is exempt from the effects of gravity, not if you believe the reasoning about black holes. Or is it you believe light can only be effected by gravity by being slowed down by it.
It's not a matter of belief or reasoning; this stuff is demonstrable. It's not at all like someone just made it all up on a Friday before going home. But yes, light is affected by gravity. That's how we have been able to directly image galaxies literally on the other side of the Universe, by using relatively nearby gravity sources (such as galaxies) as optical lenses. If you're trying to postulate that measurements of the speed of light are variable and thus unreliable because of this, be very ware that the maximum speed of light in a vacuum is unchanged. Positing a slower speed of light constant actually gets you a far older Universe, not a younger one.
Either way, the distance to objects such as the Andromeda Galaxy - A.K.A. M31, The Great Spiral - is measured in a variety of ways, both direct and indirect. None of them, to my knowledge, involve gravity, so I'm not clear what you're trying to say unless it's to do with what I mentioned above about a young Universe. Which as I say is dead in the water before you even start.
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
