Relativity and Black Holes

Consequences of General Relativity

In his 1915 paper, Einstein pointed out 3 consequences of his theory:

1. The bending of light as it passes near a massive object,

2. The precession of Mercury's orbit, and
3. Gravitational redshift.

Since we postulate that gravity is a curvature of spacetime and that

photons follow geodesics in spacetime, we find that "gravity bends light" (to
be precise, it is the spacetime which is bent). The effect was experimentally
verified in the famous 1919 eclipse expedition of Arthur Eddington. During a
total eclipse of the Sun, the position of a star very near the Sun's limb was
measured. The star's position was found to be shifted by an amount predicted
by the general theory. This experiment played a big role in making Einstein
the "scientific genius" and public figure that he was to become in the 20's, 30',
and 40's.
A reputation that continues even today! This experiment has been reproduced
a number of times using other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum (mainly,
radio sources). A more contemporary example which is also a consequence of
this "bending of light" is gravitational lensing.

If a very distant galaxy is precisely along the line of sight with a massive
foreground object, then we will see multiple images of the background galaxy
as the foreground object "focuses" the light rays. In some situations, the image
appears curved and is a segment of the a so-called Einstein ring. In this Hubble
Space Telescope image of the cluster of galaxies Abell 2218, we see arcs of the
Einstein ring of distant galaxies which are focused by the Abell cluster.
Here is a Hubble image of the cluster of galaxies C10024+1654. This
impressive photo shows a number of images of a distant blue galaxy. Notice
that the images are a bit distorted and lie along a circle roughly centered at
the location of the cluster.
A second example of experimental evidence in support of the general theory
of relativity is the precession of the orbit of Mercury. Mercury orbits the Sun
in an elliptical orbit with eccentricity 0.2 and therefore experiences different
accelerations due to the Sun. This results in a precession (or shifting) of the
perihelion (the point of the orbit closest to the Sun) over consecutive orbits.
The observed precession is 43.11''± 0.45'' per century and general relativity
predicts a precession of 43.03'' per century.

A photon emitted near the surface of an extremely massive object will loose
energy as it escapes the intense gravitational field. This results in a
gravitational redshift of the photons. We'll explore this in more detail when
we look at black holes.