Is there any experimental or observational confirmation of curvature of spacetime?

Pl stay away, as you cannot contribute beyond a few childish emojis..

 

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Gravitational waves pad ?

What direction are these waves moving ?

 

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A few emojis reflecting on your credibility along with some well know fact as detailed over the last 100 years or so.

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http://www.sciforums.com/threads/gravity-waves-detected-for-the-first-time-ever.154848/

 

The God

I always figured or thought that curved space was really about the energy or waves of energy ; such as the Sun's atmosphere; distorting the space in which it propagates.

river

 

What do you mean by distorting the space ?

Whena submarine moves inside the water, it distorts the water....
when an aircraft flies, it distorts the air..medium. You see when a jumbo takes off, it is not advisable to allow a smaller plane to take off, because the air is badly distorted...

So for distortion you need certain physical properties in the medium...and what is that in case of space ?

 

Zero

You don't need a medium.

The Sun's atmosphere propagates into space despite the lack of medium .

Unless " ether " is the medium.

 

Curved spacetime is simply a result the geometry being altered in the presence of mass/energy. The Sun warps spacetime in its vicinity.
Earth and the planets follow paths in that spacetime curvature and subsequent gravity.
Spacetime curvature has been evidenced many times.

Space time tells matter/energy how to move: Matter/energy tells spacetime how to curve:

The ether does not exist and is a long defunct hypothesis that was disproven.
Spacetime is what evolved from the BB, and is curved and warped in the presence of mass to create what we see as gravity. How and why it is deformed is another question: The hard evidence and research shows us that is what occurs.
In GR space and time are interchangeable, flexible and intertwined entities we call spacetime and gravity is simply a phenomenon that exhibits itself when this spacetime is warped/twisted/curved.

The above is accepted science based on experimental evidence and observations, not on the rantings and ravings of those that frequent science forums, pushing agendas.

Other answers are forthcoming at.....
http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/55394/vacuum-ether-and-spacetime
The luminiferus aether was postulated because of the existence of light as electromagnetic waves. Physicists at the time had studied waves in various media and could not conceive of a wave existing without a medium to carry it, similar to water for waves on the sea, or air for sound waves. So this hypothesized medium was an inertial frame against which everything had some velocity.

There exists the Michelson Morley experiment which first disproved the existence of the luminiferous aether and several later and recent ones. The disproof says that there is no basic inertial frame for electromagnetic waves, since they always move with velocity c in any frame.

The behaviour of matter and electromagnetic waves is consistent with this when described in terms of special relativity which ensures that the velocity of light is c. Any physics model that is Lorenz invariant assures that this is true. In fact field theoretical models for particle physics populate the vacuum with virtual pairs of particles, BUT, the whole model is Lorenz invariant so this teeming population of the vacuum is not the luminiferous aether of old.

General relativity equations also respect Lorenz invariance so even if it is hard to visualize space as an underlying dynamical system, since it is Lorenz invariant it cannot be thought as a substitute of the ancient luminiferous aether, either.

It is Lorenz invariance found to be always validated experimentally that disproved the existence of ether .
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In general relativity, it is the geometry of the space itself which is dynamic.

• The metric determines the shape of spacetime we live in.
• This metric includes time and space, and thus can tell us: if you're moving forward in time (which we all are), standing still is "that way"; around a massive body, this happens to be towards the center of the body, thus, if we want to be at a static position, a force must be exerted to do so.
• The metric is dynamic, and thus the space we live in is changing all the time. The evolution of this metric is determined by Einstein's equations. One can show that wiggles and changes to the metric governed by Einstein's equations propagate at the speed of light.

These points illustrate why the introduction of ether is unnecessary. I think 'deform' is not the best word to use when thinking of General Relativity. A better way to think of it is in terms of a geometry of space and time which is non-euclidean.

 

↑

So then the Sun's atmosphere tells spacetime how to curve , a stars light from behind the sun .

Thanks for proving my point on gravitational lensing. Which has nothing to do with gravity but all to do with ;

" Matter/energy tells spacetime how to curve " .

Thanks pad

river

 

The Sun and the atmopshere tells the spacetime how to curve and light simply follows geodesics in that spacetime.
There is also a small amount of apparent bending that is explained in Newtonian and refraction.

That's OK, but I believe you are still confused somewhat.
Gravitational lensing is a result of light that follows geodesic paths in the Sun's curved spacetime, which manifests itself as gravity.
Because Matter/energy tells spacetime how to curve " we get gravity.

 

http://w.astro.berkeley.edu/~jcohn/lens.html

Gravitational Lensing
In general relativity, the presence of matter (energy density) can curve spacetime, and the path of a light ray will be deflected as a result. This process is called gravitational lensing and in many cases can be described in analogy to the deflection of light by (e.g. glass) lenses in optics. Many useful results for cosmology have come out of using this property of matter and light.

For many of the cases of interest one does not need to fully solve the general relativistic equations of motion for the coupled spacetime and matter, because the bending of spacetime by matter is small. (Quantitatively the matter bending space is moving slowly relative to c, the speed of light and the "gravitational potential" Phi induced by the matter obeys |Phi|/c2 << 1 .)

A sketch of the paradigm of a lensed system is below ( source):

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more at link

 

We don't pad ; get gravity

The atmosphere of the Sun is matter/energy which refracts the light from a star behind the Sun.

 

We do river get gravity: Gravity exhibits itself with curved/warped spacetime.
A small part of the apparent bending of light is due to refraction.
The majority is due to gravitational lensing, and there are many papers which show that as given in the previous discussion on this.
see post 91

 

http://www.universetoday.com/118751/what-is-gravitational-lensing/

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This illustration shows how gravitational lensing works. The gravity of a large galaxy cluster is so strong, it bends, brightens and distorts the light of distant galaxies behind it. The scale has been greatly exaggerated; in reality, the distant galaxy is much further away and much smaller. Credit: NASA, ESA, L. Calcada

 

Matter/energy tells spacetime How to curve . From your post # 88 .

 

Of course you don't need a medium for EM propagation, but then what gets distorted ?

 

Thats why I call it parrotized stuff from you.

What is spacetime in sun's vicinity ?

We have space around sun, we have time also flowing, but what is spacetime in sun's vicinity ?

 

The space .

Much like the heat emanating off the Desert ; into the air on Earth .

 

What is the similarity ?

Heat emanating off the desert may change the airflow (medium), no dispute. But 'what of space' gets changed due to sun's heat or whatever ? Now let us talk of Earth, not much heat, in that case 'what of space' gets changed and how ?

 

I used the analogy of the Heat coming off the Desert because what other analogy could I use ?

I knew that spacetime has nothing to do with the Sun's atmosphere and as well as star's light from behind the Sun its self.

Its simply light from a star ; behind the Sun which is being refracted ; by the Sun's atmosphere ; which emanates into space ; Naturally.

Nothing more nothing less . Its not that complicated .