It seems that I am being spoofed. First of all I will reiterate what I said above in different words. I have no quarrel with Galileo who observd that all objects fall to earth at the same acceleration rate, regardless of mass. That of course has been verified quite accurately and it extents even to massless objects.

However, my original statement is that my flashlight light did not fall to earth. I followed that up with reference to a laser experiment that verified the fact that transmitted laser light does not fall to earth.

The actual experiments were conducted on top of a mountain at times when turbulence was at a minimum. At times the laser light was reflected from objects in space of known distance; at other times there was no reflection except for a minute amount from the atmosphere.

The detectors on the ground measured a return from the space objects. The delay time was in agreement with the usual speed of light. The detectors on the ground did not measure a return when there was no reflection from the space object. The laser light did not fall to the earth. From this result I deduced that my flashlight also did not fall to the earth.

As the transimission was vertical, the light did not bend due to gravity. There was some bending due to the slightly irregular atmospheric refractive index which spread the beam more than the diffraction limit of the telescope.

But the point is that in simple layman terms, light does not fall to the earth. It just follows the spatial coordinates as can be calculated by General Relativity. Objects with mass do fall to the earth, and they do not just follow spatial coordinates.

I'm enjoying this exchange. Hope you are.

Richard

• May be you were not involved at all? - alexander - February 17, 2001 - 00:22 UTC
  • Re: May be you were not involved at all? - yanniru - February 17, 2001 - 20:16 UTC