General Relativeity II Effects
General Relativeity II Effects
General Relativeity II Effects
{Abstract: In this segment of the “How Fast Is It” video book, we cover the effects of general relativity and how they
differ from what Newton’s gravity predicts. Our first effect is the orbit of Mercury that precesses more than Newtonian
gravity predicts. To understand the non-Euclidian space that Mercury orbits in, we introduce the Schwarzschild metric
and compare it to the Minkowski metric for flat space-time. We illustrate the positive curvature around the Sun using
concentric circles with shrinking circumferences. We then show how this slight difference in curvature produces
additional movement in the precessing perihelion of Mercury’s orbit that exactly fits the measured number. Our next
effect is the bending of light. We cover Arthur Eddington’s famous measurement during a total eclipse of the Sun and show
how the amount of starlight bending matched Einstein’s calculations better than Newton’s. We extend this bending effect to show
how Einstein Rings and gravitational lensing work. And we show how this effect tips over light cones and changes world-lines.
Our third effect is gravitational time dilation. We show how it works and cover how our GPS uses it. We also cover the Pound-
Rebka experiment used the Mossbauer Effect to showed how this time dilation impacts gravitational redshift. We also illustrate
how this effect resolves the Twin Paradox we introduced in the Special Relativity segment. Our final implication involves frame-
dragging. To understand this effect, we introduce the Kerr Metric that covers rotating energy densities that literally drag space
along with them. We use Gravity Probe B to illustrate how it works and how it is measured. We finish with an in depth look at
the black hole in the movie Interstellar.}
Introduction
With GR we now have a theory of gravity quite different than Newton’s. But is this a difference
without a difference? Or does GR predict different physical phenomena than Newton’s theory?
If you’ve seen the “How small is it” video book on quantum mechanics and the standard model, you
may have noticed that much of the theory was developed to explain experimental evidence. In GR,
we find that the theory was developed without much experimental evidence.
But the arrival of the theory, put experimental physics to work to prove or disprove it. Einstein
himself showed that the field equations predict the orbit of Mercury better than Newton’s. He also
proposed two additional tests: one was the bending of light around the Sun, and the second was
gravitational redshift.
We’ll go into each of these plus one more on the twisting of space around rotating masses. We’ll
finish with a close look at how this all comes together around black holes.
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Orbit of Mercury
In 1916, the same year that Einstein published his GR paper, Karl Schwarzschild published his exact
solution for space around a large non-rotating mass. His metric is now called the Schwarzschild
metric and it works quite well for slowly rotating masses like the Earth and Sun and planets in our
solar system. We’ll use this metric for the first 3 tests.
If we exited in flat
Euclidean space, we would
calculate the circumference
of an orbit one km closer to
the sun and see that the
distance between the orbits
is one km.
But because of our positive curvature, if we were to measure the circumference with a radius that is
1 km shorter than the first, we’d find that it is less than 2 π times the shorter radius.
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For over half a century before Einstein's time, it was known that there was something odd about the
orbit of Mercury.
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Bending of light
When light comes close to the Sun, the sun’s gravity bends it inward. This makes the star look like
it’s further away from the sun in the sky than it really is. Both Einstein’s and Newton’s gravitation
theories predicted this.
The British astrophysicist Arthur Eddington took up positions off the coast of Africa and in Brazil,
and simultaneously measured the clusters light as it brushed past the sun.
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Gravitational Lensing
[Music : David Arkenstone - Rob and Mary. From the movie Rob Roy.]
This same light bending leads to the warping of light from distant galaxies as the light encounters
super-massive galaxies on their path to us. This is called gravitational lensing. [Einstein predicted
that we would see ‘rings’ now called Einstein rings.
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And here’s MACS J0416.1–2403 5.47 billion light years away. It’s the latest from Hubble on
gravitational lensing released in late 2015. These foreground galaxy clusters are magnifying the light
from the faint galaxies that lie far behind the clusters themselves. These faint lensed galaxies are
around 12 billion lightyears away. It’s the gravitational lensing that allows us to see that far back in
time. Without the magnification, these galaxies would be invisible for us.
Light-cone tipping
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This is light-cone tipping. The closer we get to the source of the gravity, the greater the space-time
curvature. And the larger the matter curving the space, the greater the curvature. We’ll take another
look at this when we get to black holes.
One of the most dramatic consequences of GR is how space-time curvature effects the flow of time.
We’ll use the elevator thought experiment to illustrate
how clocks run at different rates in the box according to their
distance from the source of the gravity. We’ll see that a clock
closer to the source of the gravitational field runs slower than a
clock further away.
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Now let’s repeat the lightning strikes so that, from the point of view of the person on the moving
train, they strike at the same time.
Now we can map the movements of A and B in the accelerating elevator to the space-time graph.
The center is the source of the acceleration (aka gravity). A is to the right of it and B is a bit further
to the right reflecting their distances from the source of the gravity. As the elevator accelerates, the
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world-lines on the space-time graph are not straight lines. They curve outwards because their
velocity increases with every second.
A and B both agree that A’s clock is ticking slower than B’s clock. [We are skipping the SR effects
of time dilation and space contraction here. They play a big role as the velocities approach the speed
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of light.] The equivalence principle tells us that the same thing will happen near a massive body.
Gravity slows down time. Newton’s gravitation has no such implication.
We see this with our GPS systems. In our segment on SR, we saw that time dilation due to velocity
differences have GPS satellites losing every day. Time that must be corrected for to get the right
positions on the surface of the Earth.
They must also take into account gravitational time dilation due to their being further away from the
Earth than clocks on the ground. Based on the Schwarzschild metric, calculations show that the
satellites' clocks will gain over 45,000 nanoseconds a day due to this general relativity effect. The
accuracy of our GPS system is strong evidence for the correctness of the GTR. [So the total
relativity effect is the difference between the two (45850 – 7214) of 38636 ns per day.]
In 1959, physicists Robert Pound and Glen Rebka preformed an experiment in the Jefferson
Physical Lab at Harvard to demonstrate gravitational redshift. It was based on physicist
Rudolph Mossbauer’s effect discovered two years earlier that involves the emission and absorption
of gamma rays from the excited states of an iron nucleus.
Here we have an iron atom’s nucleus in an excited state. When it falls to a lower energy level, a
gamma ray photon carrying the energy is emitted. Once this photon encounters a like atom, it will
be absorbed – raising the energy level of the encountered atom’s nucleus.
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The problem is that when the gamma ray is ejected, the nucleus recoils. Because of energy
momentum conservation, the recoil energy reduces the energy of the gamma ray. The gamma ray is
no longer a match for the other nucleus and it moves right through. There is no absorption.
What Mossbauer discovered was that if he imbeds the atoms in a crystal, the recoil is reduced
dramatically, and absorption can be established.
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So instead of both twins thinking the other should be younger, they both agree that the twin on the
rocket to Vega and back is younger. No contradiction is involved and the paradox is resolved.
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Frame Dragging
[Music : Heuberger - Midnight Bells: from the operetta Der Opernball written in
1898.]
Our last test is the most recent. It was designed to measure the twisting of space around a rotating
mass. This twisting is called frame-dragging, where space is literally dragged along with the rotating
mass. The effect was derived in 1918 by physicists Josef Lense and Hans Thirring, and is also known
as the Lense–Thirring effect.
They predicted that the rotation of a massive object would
distort the space-time metric, making the orbit of a nearby test
particle precess like a gyroscope. This does not happen
with Newtonian gravity where the gravitational field of a body
depends only on its mass, not on its rotation.
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By 2011, data analysis had confirmed that frame-dragging did occur and measured it to within 15%
of the amount predicted by the Kerr metric for Einstein’s field equations.
One of the most interesting consequences of GR is the structure and impact of a Black Hole.
One of the best illustrations of a black hole was created for the 2015 movie “Interstellar” with the
help of theoretical physicist Kip Thorne. This black hole, called Gargantua, was given a mass of 100
million suns and a super high rotation rate of 99.8 percent of the speed of light. With this kind of
rotation, we see that Gargantua is a Kerr black hole.
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The Kerr metric shows that light can also be captured in stable orbits outside the event horizon. For
a rapidly rotating black hole, the orbital volume around the black hole would be significant. This
would produce a photon sphere shell incasing the black hole with light from all the stars in the
universe accumulated over the entire age of the universe. It would be a sight to see. But given that
the light is trapped in orbit, we can only see what leaks out.
This thin ring around the black hole
represents the cross section of this shell we’d
see because of light that leaks out in our
direction. It is flattened on the left because
light rotating with the Black Hole’s rotation
can get closer to the horizon than light
rotating against the black holes’ rotation.
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If the disk were not gravitational lensed, the black hole would have looked like this.
But, because of gravitationally lensing, the massive amount of light rays emitted from the disk’s top
face travel up and over the black hole, and light rays emitted from the disk’s bottom face travel
down and under the black hole. This combination gives us the full image of how the black hole
would actually look.
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orbit. But the bulk of the time comes from gravitational time dilation. And the fact that Gargantua’s
rotational energy is so large, intensifies time dilation considerably.
As we saw earlier, when space-time is curved by the presence of mass-energy, the light cone
structure gets distorted. When the mass is a black hole, the tilting reaches 450 at the event horizon.
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In “Interstellar”, Cooper flies his ship into the black hole while Brand watches from a higher orbit.
We can use our space-time diagram along with light cone bending again to illustrate what each of
them would have seen.
First we’ll take a look at it from Cooper’s point of view. As he
heads directly into Gargantua he sees periodic signals from
Brand. She is far enough away from the horizon for her light
signals to all travel in a parallel manner at 45 degrees along her
light cone boundary. Cooper crosses the event horizon without
even noticing it, as signals continue to arrive at regular intervals.
Eventually he will feel the tidal forces of the singularity.
What’s more, because of gravitational redshift, the image of Cooper and his ship shift to the red. At
the horizon, it has shifted into the infrared and can no longer be seen by Brand. For her, Cooper
grinds to a halt and goes invisible. Quite different from what Cooper sees.
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Conclusion
The GTR is now 100 years old. In spite of the fact that there have been a number of tests, questions
remain. One of the theories most interesting predictions is gravitational waves. But as yet, no
gravitational waves have been found. If they are ever found, would there be an associated
elementary boson particle (the graviton) like photons for the electromagnetic force? A great deal of
active research is under way to find out. The fate of GR remains in the hands of experimental
physicists.
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