Gravitaional Lensing
Observations of gravitational lensing effects are expected to provide crucial information about the universe and its structure. In approximately 500 words, carefully explain how General Relativity explains these effects.
Observations of gravitational lensing effects are expected to provide crucial information about the universe and its structure. The main purpose of this paper is to address and show how general relativity explains the effects of gravitational lensing. The first section will deal with General relativity and outline the basic concept behind this normally elusive theory. This will be followed by a brief outline and description of the gravitational lensing effect summed up by a detailed explanation of how General Relativity predicts these effects.
General Relativity:
The General theory of relativity is the geometric theory of gravity published by Albert Einstein in 1915. It unifies special relativity and Newton's law of universal gravitation, resulting in a theory in which gravity is a property of what we now call spacetime. In particular, the curvature of spacetime is directly related to the four-momentum (mass-energy and linear momentum) of whatever matter and radiation is present in objects, and hence states that the curvature of spacetime is influenced by matter. Einstein’s theory of general relativity needed to be tested before it became widely accepted. However such tests were not easy to perform because the weak gravitational fields available on Earth produced results which were too small to accurately work with. Einstein proposed three famous tests of general relativity, one of them, gravitational lensing will be discussed in further depth in the next section.
Gravitational lensing:
The General theory of Relativity states that the presence of matter (usually in a large body with high energy density) can curve spacetime significantly, causing the path of a light ray to be deflected as a result....
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