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Foil 12 Some Tests of General Relativity

From Master Foilset of Numerical Formulation and Solution of Collision 0f two Black Holes CPSP713 Case studies in Computational Science -- Spring Semester 1996. by Geoffrey C. Fox * See also color IMAGE

Einstein first published equations in 1915 with three predictions:
Bending of Light as it passed massive objects such as stars
  • Experimentally verified in 1919 by observation of star field near the sun during an eclipse
There is a small (43 seconds of arc per century -- with 3600 seconds of arc as one degree) shift in Mercury's perihelion not accounted for by Newtonian Gravity
  • Einstein verified that General relativity predicted this soon after publication of equations
"Blue" shift (frequency or energy change) of light as it falls down a gravitational field
  • In 1960, (5 years after Einstein's death) Pound and Rebka observed the two parts in 1012 frequency shift as photons fell 74 feet of the Jefferson tower of the physics building at Harvard
  • They used Mossbauer effect



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