Related papers: Can an observer really catch up with light

The coupling between the electromagnetic and gravitational fields results in "faster than light" photons and invalids the Lorentz invariance and some laws of physics. A typical example is that the first and third laws of geometric optics…

The deflection and gravitational lensing of light and massive particles in arbitrary static, spherically symmetric and asymptotically (anti-)de Sitter spacetimes are considered in this work. We first proved that for spacetimes whose metric…

Normally the issue or question of the time of arrival of light rays at an observer coming from a given source is associated with Fermat's Principle of Least Time which yields paths of extremal time. We here investigate a related but…

In this essay we discuss the difference in views of the Universe as seen by two different observers. While one of the observers follows a geodesic congruence defined by the geometry of the cosmological model, the other observer follows the…

Almost twenty years ago the light was slowed down to less than $10^{-7}$ of its vacuum speed in a cloud of ultracold atoms of sodium. Upon a sudden turn-off of the coupling laser, a slow light pulse can be imprinted on cold atoms such that…

The Alcubierre warp spacetime yields a fascinating chance for comfortable interstellar travel between arbitrary distant places without the time dilation effect as in special relativistic flights. Even though the warp spacetime needs exotic…

Recently, Rindler and Ishak have argued that the bending of light is, in principle, changed by the presence of a cosmological constant since one must consider not only the null geodesic equation, but also the process of measurement. I agree…

From the equivalence principle, one gets the strength of the gravitational effect of a mass $M$ on the metric at position r from it. It is proportional to the dimensionless parameter $\beta^2 = 2GM/rc^2$, which normally is $<< 1$. Here $G$…

Mallett has exhibited a cylindrically symmetric spacetime containing closed timelike curves produced by a light beam circulating around a line singularity. I analyze the static version of this spacetime obtained by setting the intensity of…

Several recent papers have suggested that the cosmological constant Lambda directly influences the gravitational deflection of light. We place this problem in a cosmological context, deriving an expression for the linear potentials which…

It is a known result by Jacobson that the flux of energy-matter through a local Rindler horizon is related with the expansion of the null generators in a way that mirrors the first law of thermodynamics. We extend such a result to a…

We use the dynamics of a galaxy, set up initially at a constant proper distance from an observer, to derive and illustrate two counter-intuitive general relativistic results. Although the galaxy does gradually join the expansion of the…

We investigate the effects of the aberration of light for a uniformly accelerating observer. The observer we consider is initially at rest with respect to a luminous spherical object--a star, say--and then starts to move away with constant…

We state a condition for an observer to be comoving with another observer in general relativity, based on the concept of lightlike simultaneity. Taking into account this condition, we study relative velocities, Doppler effect and light…

The starting point of this work is the principle that all movement of particles and photons must follow geodesics of a 4-dimensional space where time intervals are always a measure on geodesic arc lengths. The last 3 coordinates (alpha =…

We offer a concise and direct way to derive the bending angle of light (i.e. as generally called, gravitational lensing), while light grazes a star, through the approach suggested earlier by the first author, which is fundamentally based on…

We study how convergence of an observer whose state lives in a copy of the given system's space can be established using a Riemannian metric. We show that the existence of an observer guaranteeing the property that a Riemannian distance…

Penrose et al. investigated the physical incoherence of the spacetime with negative mass via the bending of light. Precise estimates of time-delay of null geodesics were needed and played a pivotal role in their proof. In this paper, we…

Two theorems related to gravitational time delay are proven. Both theorems apply to spacetimes satisfying the null energy condition and the null generic condition. The first theorem states that if the spacetime is null geodesically…

Information exchanged between observers in the universe typically travels along the null rays of the associated light signals. One may therefore decompose the luminosity distance of a given radiation source along these null geodesics,…