Live data from Hacker News

Hubble Telescope Discovers a Light-Bending 'Einstein Ring' in Space

space.com

21–30 of 60 posts

Re: Hubble Telescope Discovers a Light-Bending 'Einstein Ring' in Space

#21
post #8

Does this mean time travel is possible ?

No, not at all. Why would you think that?

Theoretically, Time travel IS possible if you can go fast enough, then you can travel into the future. (Going into the past is impossible).

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/13/time-travel-possib...

Re: Hubble Telescope Discovers a Light-Bending 'Einstein Ring' in Space

#22

Quite OT, but these phenomena always reminds me of how wrong (popular understanding of) Einstein actually is. Whereas gravity according to that understanding warps the fabric of space itself, these pictures prove that gravity actually only appears to warp space. I.e. our intuitive, euclidean concept of space is actually the most correct, albeit an abstract, inferred phenomenon.

I'd be interested to hear how you came to that conclusion, as these pictures show the complete opposite to me. In a vacuum, light takes the shortest distance between two points. That light is bent by gravity shows that gravity is changing what it means to be the "shortest distance". That is, space itself is being warped by the presence of mass.

Re: Hubble Telescope Discovers a Light-Bending 'Einstein Ring' in Space

#23

Quite OT, but these phenomena always reminds me of how wrong (popular understanding of) Einstein actually is. Whereas gravity according to that understanding warps the fabric of space itself, these pictures prove that gravity actually only appears to warp space. I.e. our intuitive, euclidean concept of space is actually the most correct, albeit an abstract, inferred phenomenon.

What made you come to this conclusion?

Re: Hubble Telescope Discovers a Light-Bending 'Einstein Ring' in Space

#24

Quite OT, but these phenomena always reminds me of how wrong (popular understanding of) Einstein actually is. Whereas gravity according to that understanding warps the fabric of space itself, these pictures prove that gravity actually only appears to warp space. I.e. our intuitive, euclidean concept of space is actually the most correct, albeit an abstract, inferred phenomenon.

I'd be interested to hear how you came to that conclusion, as these pictures show the complete opposite to me. In a vacuum, light takes the shortest distance between two points. That light is bent by gravity shows that gravity is changing what it means to be the "shortest distance". That is, space itself is being warped by the presence of mass.

Sure, maybe this explains better: The picture shows how light from a galaxy or galaxies from behind the galaxy cluster SDSS J0146-0929 are bent around it. It makes it "seem as though the galaxy is in several places at once".

The key word is "seem", which means that the light-bending characteristic of gravity make space seem like something it is not. Hope this helps.

Re: Hubble Telescope Discovers a Light-Bending 'Einstein Ring' in Space

#26

Quite OT, but these phenomena always reminds me of how wrong (popular understanding of) Einstein actually is. Whereas gravity according to that understanding warps the fabric of space itself, these pictures prove that gravity actually only appears to warp space. I.e. our intuitive, euclidean concept of space is actually the most correct, albeit an abstract, inferred phenomenon.

No, this phenomenon actually proves that space really is warped, otherwise you wouldn't see the light from behind a galaxy cluster because light follows a straight line.

Re: Hubble Telescope Discovers a Light-Bending 'Einstein Ring' in Space

#27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be interested to hear how you came to that conclusion, as these pictures show the complete opposite to me. In a vacuum, light takes the shortest distance between two points. That light is bent by gravity shows that gravity is changing what it means to be the "shortest distance". That is, space itself is being warped by the presence of mass.

Sure, maybe this explains better: The picture shows how light from a galaxy or galaxies from behind the galaxy cluster SDSS J0146-0929 are bent around it. It makes it "seem as though the galaxy is in several places at once". The key word is "seem", which means that the light-bending characteristic of gravity make space seem like something it is not. Hope this helps.

"Seem" refers to the lens like nature or the warped space.

Re: Hubble Telescope Discovers a Light-Bending 'Einstein Ring' in Space

#28
post #23

Quite OT, but these phenomena always reminds me of how wrong (popular understanding of) Einstein actually is. Whereas gravity according to that understanding warps the fabric of space itself, these pictures prove that gravity actually only appears to warp space. I.e. our intuitive, euclidean concept of space is actually the most correct, albeit an abstract, inferred phenomenon.

What made you come to this conclusion?

Tough one to answer since I believe I already explained the reasoning in the comment. I'll be happy to play if you think something is unclear there. The only rule is; you need to say what you think of this yourself.

Re: Hubble Telescope Discovers a Light-Bending 'Einstein Ring' in Space

#29

Quite OT, but these phenomena always reminds me of how wrong (popular understanding of) Einstein actually is. Whereas gravity according to that understanding warps the fabric of space itself, these pictures prove that gravity actually only appears to warp space. I.e. our intuitive, euclidean concept of space is actually the most correct, albeit an abstract, inferred phenomenon.

No, this phenomenon actually proves that space really is warped, otherwise you wouldn't see the light from behind a galaxy cluster because light follows a straight line.

Even the concept of 'warped' space itself indicates that the intuitive, euclidean concept is correct, the light does in fact not travel in a straight line, it follows a 'warped' line.

The difference between the two is that the 'warped' space is what we observe (because observing is an electromagnetic process, subject to gravity), 'real' space is something we can only infer (or observe in photos like in the linked article)

Re: Hubble Telescope Discovers a Light-Bending 'Einstein Ring' in Space

#30
post #12
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not clickbait - the article says we know about less than 12 Einstein rings. So finding 1 occurence of something we've only seen 12 of seems significant.

Hmm... I could've sworn I've seen that exact photo several times before. But NASA does seem to claim it's new. Or at least the nasa.gov page was edited recently...

Yeah another comment said the image is of an older one. There probably isn't a photo of the new one yet
Post reply on HN