A blue sky, with the word gravimotion, to replace space-time curvature

What is the Action of Gravity on Light Rays?

WELCOME to this Gravimotion's Website Page.
Gravimotion is a logical (not philosophical) interpretation of physics mathematics.
Gravimotion departs from the conventional interpretation made of physics mathematics.
Gravimotion's main feature is to make sense!
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Please forgive, when awkward, the English of this page. English is not the author's native language.

The question should be reworded in three questions as follows:

  1. How does gravity affect the path of light rays?
    Einstein answered mathematically that question with extreme precision.
  2. How does gravity modify the intensity of light?
    According to scientists it seems that long distances rather than gravity modify the intensity of light.
  3. How does gravity affect the frequency of light?
    This question is the object of this web page.

And here is how gravity affects the frequency of light.

In the graph below the blue circle represents a huge heavy quasar, which emits from its surface light rays at relatively high frequency F1, blue in color.
In that graph the gravity field, or Einstein's space-time curvature surrounding the quasar, is illustrated with an imaginary, yet now familiar to all, grid of stretched lines.

On this illustration a light ray through gravity is redshifted

Next we choose the distance Dqe between the emitter of the blue light and the observer on Earth to be constant.
In other words there is no relative motion between the quasar and Earth that would modify the frequency F1.

In this situation the space-time-curvature (or gravity) surrounding the quasar shifts the frequency F1 toward the red as explained in the next section.
Note that the frequency shift due to Earth's own gravity is not taken in consideration as being negligible with respect to that of the quasar.
Also should light of red frequency be emitted on Earth an observer on the quasar would see a blue frequency shift!
As such this frequency shift is also specifically labeled as either gravitational redshift or gravitational blueshift.

And here is why gravity shifts frequency.

  • First here is an intuitive explanation of frequency shift induced by gravity.
    While escaping it, light has to fight the gravitation field or force of gravity.
    Just as a stone thrown from the ground up into the sky looses speed or energy, light waves emitted from the surface and away from it must loose energy.
    And light rays happen to loose energy not through lower speeds but through lower frequencies or a shift toward the red frequency, which is lower than the blue frequency.
  • And here are a few enlightening details about the frequency of light while traveling through space.
    On the above graph the shift in frequency occurs while the light travels through the quasar’s gravity field only.
    By contrast when and where the light travels far away from any source of gravity its frequency remains unchanged.

    This reminds Newton's first law, in which the words unchanged frequency would have taken the place of uniform motion.
    As the above suggests, both motion of matter and translation of light follow some kind of common natural law involving their energy.
    In spite of this obvious coincidence, Einstein focused on the discripancy between relative speed of matter and absolute speed of light. The object of the special relativity being to reconcile these 2 types of speed, or to find the common feature that links motion of matter to translation of light.
    The naked reality, whether seen through relativity or common sense gravimotion, is that motion of matter and translation of light are in harmony!Click / Footnote 1
  • Now let us justify gravitational frequency shift using scientific arguments.
    In accordance with the Doppler effect, just as an emergency vehicle siren pitch changes while moving by, light frequency is modified by the relative motion of its source with respect to the observer.
    While at it electromagnetic waves is the scientific name given to light rays, and the later occupies only a very small spectrum of the former.
    1. Whether accelerated or not and through the Doppler effect, motion has the property to modify the frequencies of electromagnetic waves.
    2. A gravitational field at rest is equivalent to an accelerated motion.Click / Footnote 2
      By the way the word gravimotion that fuses motion into gravitation embodies this equivalence.
    3. Putting items 1 and 2 together, the frequency of an electromagnetic wave traveling through a still gravitational field is modified through the Doppler effect that that field's accelerated motion equivalence produces.

The implications of such an interpretation are far reaching

A still gravity field producing a red shift as illustrated above, puts into question the alleged expansion of the universe!
And the dark energy necessary for that expansion is in jeopardy along with it.
And in question along with the alleged expansion of the universe is evidently the concept of big bangClick / Footnote 3, which goes hand in hand with it.
While at it, note that supposing there were nothing, as suggested, before the big bang, the big bang theory, in which energy all of a sudden appears from nowhere, would be in direct conflict with the energy conservation law, which instead states that no energy can be either created or lost!

Warning

The above interpretation, in which gravity produces a frequency shift in such a way that it puts into question the expansion of the universe is definitely not in line with physics' teachings.
Here is why:
  1. The establishment of big bang "theory"
    In the early 1900's, based on Einstein's general relativity, Georges Lemaître came up with the Big Bang theory.
  2. The "reality" of big bang
    Approximately at the same time, Hubble, an astronomer, discovered that far away galaxies produce a red-shift.
    Even though Hubble was not affirmative himself about it, physicists declared the Universe was expanding, and that fitted perfectly the big band theory!
    If we go back in time, if we reverse the expansion, allegedly discovered in the sky by Hubble, we rejoin "physically" the "theoretical" big bang.
    From "theory" big bang becomes fact verified "experimentally".
  3. As a side effect the expansion of the universe becomes fact
    Because big bang truly occurred in the past, the expansion of the universe becomes also a "fact".
So in physics (and we laypersons read that over and over in the scientific yet for everybody press) the red shift observed from distant galaxies is the sign of an expanding universe because it fits big bang and vice versa.
By contrast, as you certainly noticed, in this new interpretation of nature that is gravimotion the cause of the observed red shift is not the expansion of the universe but gravity.

The possible interpretations of the red frequency shift

Yet in reality any of the following phenomenon could cause the observed red frequency shift:
  • Relative motion (which by the way could be interpreted as us on earth receding from faraway galaxies and quasars, rather than the later receding from us)
  • Expansion of faraway space (or contraction of local, close by space).
    This is different than relative motion: in relative motion remote celestial objects move away from us "in space" or the opposite, we are locally receding away from them "in space", or both; In an expansion of space celestial object are not moving, space in between them expands, and that expansion again may occur in a number of differing ways.
  • Shrinking of celestial bodies
  • Electromagnetic effects
  • Last but not least, gravitational redshift

Gravimotion's interpretation is pure elegance

Interpreting the observed frequency shift (discovered by Hubble) as being induced by gravity is pure elegance though.
  • Contingencies attached to physics' alleged universe expansion that are gravity's adverse effect and the invention of dark energy all vanish into thin air in this gravitational red shift.
  • Most impressive, in that interpretation, gravity's adverse effect is turned into an ally!
And that matches fully the splendor of Nature's harmony.
Gravity induced frequency shift and gravimotion fit like hand in glove.
There is much more about gravimotion... click the button:
Gravimotion Treatise
Footnote 1:
In the theory of relativity the reconciliation comes through the abolishment of absolute time.
In gravimotion (in which time does not exist) motion of matter is just as absolute as the motion of light.
And because the observation of motion is relative, and not motion per se, Einstein relativity theory remains true.
Get full explanation at: Motion is absolute, observation of motion is relative.
Click here to return where you were reading in the first place.

Footnote 2:
Einstein in person wrote all about this equivalence!
Click and read Einstein's own words; read up to the fourth paragraph included.
Note that Einstein, in his thought experiment, identifies accelerated motion to gravitational field, not the other way around.
And doing so Einstein implies specifically that gravitational fields only are real and that any resulting "accelerated relative motion" is elusive!
As a matter of fact Einstein claimed that a roofer, because he feels no force, is not accelerated while falling of the roof!
Yet one sees accelerated motion when an object is in free fall and one doesn't see any gravitational field!
As such, elemental observation suggests instead that motion is real and that gravitational fields are a construct of the human mind!
As a matter of fact Einstein's chest, which is pulled by a rope, is physically in motion, the alleged and resulting gravitational field ends up being merely a construct within his mental experiment!
Click here to return where you were reading in the first place.

Footnote 3:
Physicists themselves are not sure about big bang! Actually they frankly question their own big bang theory, see "Scientific American" April 2011 article:
Quantum Gaps in Big Bang Theory. Why our best explanation of how the universe evolved must be fixed-or replaced.
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