A citizen scientist validates General Relativity.

[LastPoet]

For this, nothing better than a german Physicist....

Whatever happened to Alex K? Last I heard he was busy with teaching teenagers physics. Hmmm can't imagine a tougher job

[zebo-the-fat]

Give that man a beer!
Good work

[Anomalocaris]

[polymath257]

[Tobie]

[vorlon13]

Eclipses generally don't happen in very convenient places either.

If one wants to repeat the observations one must transport the relevant equipment to the site of the next appropriate eclipse and then hope the day of it's not cloudy.

Additionally, as totality approaches a given location, there is a cooling effect as the shadow of the moon blocks the suns heat. There can be atmospheric turbulence effects that can make discerning the precise images on the photographs more difficult.

Another factor with modern imaging devices, you will need a wide field of view (several degrees) and a high pixel count to accurately record deflections in the arc-second range. It takes a whole bunch of pixels to do this.

[polymath257]

I find it utterly impossible to believe this experiment was not successfully performed emany times, either directly or incidentally, in the intervening 100 years.

If that were indeed the case, then eddington’s original experiment would have been dismissed as a fluke.

Also, distinguishing a positional difference of 1.7 arc seconds is not trivial with amateur equipment and i wonder whether it was relativity or wistfulness that underlie this particular observation.

---

Teaching teenagers physics is easily done.  Just drop two of them out of a window and they learn Doppler effect, constant gravitation acceleration, interchange of kinetic and potential energy, and inelastic collisions, all in just a few seconds.

I'm fairly sure this principle is used to measure the mass of "invisible" space objects, since their effect on the space time is to focus photons from more distance sources of light.

yes, indeed. It is one of the major ways of mapping out the distribution of dark matter.

[Banned]

How do we know that there isn't something else in space that bends light?

Water bends light, and in the right conditions you can't visually prove that it is in between the eye and the object.

Is it possible that space is filled with something which isn't percieved by material beings and their material instruments?

While an absense of physical evidence isn't a licence for the imagination, it is presumptuous to say that what is observable is the only truth.

[polymath257]

How do we know that there isn't something else in space that bends light?

Water bends light, and in the right conditions you can't visually prove that it is in between the eye and the object.

Is it possible that space is filled with something which isn't percieved by material beings and their material instruments?

While an absense of physical evidence isn't a licence for the imagination, it is presumptuous to say that what is observable is the only truth.

Well, in a sense, that is how we discovered dark matter and how we investigate its properties. Dark matter doesn't interact with ordinary matter or light very strongly (if at all). So in a sense, it satisfies your criteria.

We use the way that dark matter bends light to map out where it is and how much is there. We do that by looking at slight distortions in the way light travels from more distant objects. So, there is a sense in which we are detecting the water just as you suggested.

[Banned]

Well, in a sense, that is how we discovered dark matter and how we investigate its properties. Dark matter doesn't interact with ordinary matter or light very strongly (if at all). So in a sense, it satisfies your criteria.

We use the way that dark matter bends light to map out where it is and how much is there. We do that by looking at slight distortions in the way light travels from more distant objects. So, there is a sense in which we are detecting the water just as you suggested.

That's what I was thinking, although I haven't heard of applying dark matter to light bending.