Variations that Affect Our Perception of Light

Robert: College Student: Variations That Affect the Perception of Light

Orlav explained that like the speed of sound, the speed of light had slight variations in respect to the following: gravity, fluid, and the observer's location. “But the variations are minuscule,” he added. He narrated that light could actually bend when it encountered strong gravitational pull – that even though it was often thought that that light had no mass, in reality, it had a tiny, tiny amount. The photons that made up light still had enough mass to be affected by extreme gravity fields. He reminded them of the early days of Astronomy, and how it took studying a solar eclipse to realize that part of our view of the stars around Earth was actually in error. Scientists discovered that some light from certain stars was being bent by the gravity of the sun. Starlight bent as it traveled by the sun on its route to Earth.

“Bent how?” Suddenly interested, a boy glanced up from doodling of a character that looked strikingly similar to Orlav.

Orlav explained that it was bent in the sense that it behaved like light does when it passes through water. He used the example of trying to pick up a stone in the river, and it wasn’t quite where your eyes told you it was. Back to early days of Astronomy, the eclipse blocked the sun, and the stars that had been clustered 'around' the moon suddenly appeared more centered than they had before. Astronomers of the day thought this was strange and did more studies to discover that when light traveled through strong fields of gravity like the sun's, it was bent, or thrown off.