what do you think would happen if light bends?

what if light bends?

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This poll closed on February 16, 2005.
No longer accepting new votes.

[Adro of Crisis]

Refraction: light bends while going into a different material.

[Zoch]

otakujack

Halite15

Okay, light is not bent by gravity

More importantly light does not 'bend' going through water. Light travels slower in more dense objects (diamonds, etc.). This means that where the light would have originaly gone to (without the substance) is altered.

the speed of light is a universal constant. it CANNOT travel slower. and it is bent by gravity.

Wrong. The speed of light in a vacuum is a constant. Light has been slowed down to speeds low enough that a car could race it.

[OneTinSoldier]

Okay... you guys are way too clever for me to give such a simplistica answer...

Light has the very unique and interesting property of acting as both a wave(massless) and a particle(having mass). In the particle mode it can be deflected by gravity, but it takes a lot of gravity, as in a black hole to stop it completely.
Someone here mentioned that gravity actually bends the "space-time continuum". That is true, if the space-time "theory" holds. but what we know to be a fact is that light will bend in the presence of a "gravity well".

-OTS

[S-Ranker]

you guys got me all wrong, by bend I ment twist, like go around corners

[Slivilina]

S-Ranker

you guys got me all wrong, by bend I ment twist, like go around corners

it always follows a straight line unless gravity is present and then space curves making light appear to bend

in fiber optics it simply bounces around the turns still making straight lines though (zig zag)

[A Lost Iguana]

OneTinSoldier

Light has the very unique and interesting property of acting as both a wave(massless) and a particle(having mass). In the particle mode it can be deflected by gravity, but it takes a lot of gravity, as in a black hole to stop it completely.

It is not a unique property: all elementary particles observe wave-particle duality.

[Krimson Kaos]

No gravity discovered within our sector can bend light...
though deeper reaches of space have black hole that can turn light inside out to a kind of anti-light.

[OneTinSoldier]

Let's say the "space-time continuum" theory holds true...
Then light would bend and twist along with a the "fabric" of "space-time". Picture a matress with a sheet on it. Then put a heavy object, say a bowling ball or shot put in the middle. Now look at how the fabric contorts around the heavy object. This would be similar to the fabric of space, but in just one plane, and there would be an infinite number of planes. And light in any of the given planes would be as warped.
To answer the second question regarding how much it would bend, we merely need to know the density of the gravitational field. For example, in theory, a black hole is created when an object so dense, that is it's gravitational field is so strong that light cannot escape. It's gravtationl "strengh" determines how far out into space it's "event horizon" protrudes. The "event horizon" is that distance from the "event", the "event" being the dense body in question, that light cannot escape, and is actually turned back toward the event.
This "event horizon" is a magical place where "space-time" is really warped. Around this "event horizon" is where you have the possibility of anything from time travel to distant space travel... at least in theory anyway.

Does this help? Or am I just blathering?

-OTS

[E=Condoms^2]

Light can be anything if it were slowed down to our frame of reference