Nothing bends light.

[Attiyah Zahdeh]

I consider that nothing bends light. In other words, the electric fields, magnetic fields, and gravity of mass, whether applied individually or collectively, cannot bend light at all. Light resists being bent under the effect of the gravity whatever great the mass causing it be.

[antoniseb]

What do you think about the gravitational micro-lensing events seem by the OGLE survey, and of the Einstein rings we've seen?

[Celestial Mechanic]

I consider that nothing bends light. In other words, the electric fields, magnetic fields, and gravity of mass, whether applied individually or collectively, cannot bend light at all. Light resists being bent under the effect of the gravity whatever great the mass causing it be.
So what bends light as it passes through a prism or lens? :D

[Attiyah Zahdeh]

So what bends light as it passes through a prism or lens? :D
By bending I mean the changing of the straight path to a curved path in the same medium. But what happens to the light in a prism or a lens is refraction.

[Celestial Mechanic]

By bending I mean the changing of the straight path to a curved path in the same medium. But what happens to the light in a prism or a lens is refraction.
There is no "change" in a path from straight to curved; light follows a geodesic in spacetime which may or may not be curved. A geodesic is the "straightest" curve possible in that geometry.

Sometimes you will see gravitational lensing treated as light traveling through a medium with a variable index of refraction n=sqrt(g00). The equivalence is not perfect, but it's good enough for many purposes.

[korjik]

There is no "change" in a path from straight to curved; light follows a geodesic in spacetime which may or may not be curved. A geodesic is the "straightest" curve possible in that geometry.

Sometimes you will see gravitational lensing treated as light traveling through a medium with a variable index of refraction n=sqrt(g00). The equivalence is not perfect, but it's good enough for many purposes.

so in other words, he is right. Light dosent bend, space does :)

[Celestial Mechanic]

so in other words, he is right. Light doesn't bend, space does :)
In that sense, yes. But I don't think that's what he has in mind. I'm sure he'll let us know.

I'm reminded of stories of some of the early immigrants to Milwaukee, and some of the strange things they would do to the English language. Some of this used to be collected and written about as "Milwaukee-ese". One of my favorites concerns an intersection near my house where one streetcar line turned from one street to the other. People would say to one another, "meet me where the streetcar bends the corner around." Of course we know that the streetcar isn't bending anything; the streetcar, like a photon, can only follow the track or a null geodesic respectively.

[Tim Thompson]

Galaxy Cluster Abell 2218 (http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/archive/releases/2000/07/image/b) (color images), Hubble Space Telescope, January 24, 2000.
Galaxy Cluster 0024+1654 (http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/archive/releases/1996/10/image/a), Hubble Space Telescope, April 24, 1996.
Galaxy Cluster Abell 2218 (http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/archive/releases/1995/14/image/a) (greyscale images), Hubble Space Telescope, April 5, 1995

The 3 images linked above show examples of what appear to be extremely distorted galaxies. The mainstream explanation is that the distortion is caused by gravitational lensing, which is a valid interpretation of the images, in the context of general relativity. Note that in this context, details of the shape of the images can be reconstructed from theory, so the interpretation is robust, not tentative.

Since you reject the lensing interpretation, how do you interpret these images? And do you reject general relativity as a valid theory. If so, why?

[Senor Molinero]

What we have here is a failure to communicate.
Every report that I have ever read concerning this phenomenon says " the light is bent by the enormous gravitational field" . This is of course, layman's terminology to explain what we all know as light following a straight line (as it must) through BENT space.
AZ is right (for once, albeit unwittingly) that light is not deflected by gravity. In fact, nothing is, not even mass. Everything follows straight lines through curved space in what our 3D brains interpret to be curved lines through straight space.
AZ is right again (for twice, wittingly this time) that refraction is a different phenomenon caused by the slowing of c by a particular medium.

[Attiyah Zahdeh]

If the gravity has any power to bend light, then, according to the Newton's law of universal gravitation, all the celestial bodies must have their effects on the path of light in the space. Were this the real case, then the path of the light from any source heading to the Earth through the intergalactic space, or even through interplanetary space, should be an irregular helix showing continuously variable pitches.
Since it is established that the path of light in the space is straight rather than a helix, it turns out that the Newton's law of universal gravitation is not applied to light. Hence, the gravity of the mass, no matter how large, has no effect on the path of light, i.e., the gravitation does not bend light.
However, any susceptibility of light to be bent by the influence of the gravity of celestial masses can directly mean that measuring the astronomical distances in light years cannot give the correct values for these distances themselves. Moreover, with respect to a certain observer, light source objects having the same astronomical distance measured in light years would not be equally far from him

[captain swoop]

so how far away do you think things are?

[captain swoop]

and Apart from Newton what about Einstein and GR?

[korjik]

If the gravity has any power to bend light, then, according to the Newton's law of universal gravitation, all the celestial bodies must have their effects on the path of light in the space. Were this the real case, then the path of the light from any source heading to the Earth through the intergalactic space, or even through interplanetary space, should be an irregular helix showing continuously variable pitches.
Since it is established that the path of light in the space is straight rather than a helix, it turns out that the Newton's law of universal gravitation is not applied to light. Hence, the gravity of the mass, no matter how large, has no effect on the path of light, i.e., the gravitation does not bend light.
However, any susceptibility of light to be bent by the influence of the gravity of celestial masses can directly mean that measuring the astronomical distances in light years cannot give the correct values for these distances themselves. Moreover, with respect to a certain observer, light source objects having the same astronomical distance measured in light years would not be equally far from him

yes, it probably is an irregular helix. Of course, since the deflections would be orders of magnitude less than picoradians, the actual radius of this helix would be much less than the radius of an atom. Pretty much any other source of scattering would be orders of magnitude larger.

[Nereid]

As Attiyah Zahdeh's account has been suspended for a month (http://www.bautforum.com/showpost.php?p=831496&postcount=88), this thread will be closed until his return.

He will answer all pertinent, direct questions, about the ATM ideas he has presented in this thread.

Or, he may ask that the thread be closed, to allow more time for preparation of answers, or because he chooses to abandon defence of the ATM ideas.

[Nereid]

Thread re-opened.

[Nereid]

Per Attiyah Zahdeh's request, this thread will be closed for 30 days, while he prepares responses to the open questions.