International Astronomy and Astrophysics Research Journal

The Measurements of Light’s Gravity Deflection of General Relativity were Invalid

Mei Xiaochun *

Department of Theoretical Physics and Pure Mathematics, Institute of Innovative Physics in Fuzhou, Fuzhou, China.

Huang Zhixun

School of Information Engineering, Communication University of China, Beijing, China.

*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.

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Abstract

There were two kinds of measurements of gravity deflection of light in general relativity. One was to measure the visible light’s deflection of stars during solar eclipses, and another was to measure the radio wave deflection of quasars. This paper revealed that these measurements had not verified the deflection value 1.75”predicted by general relativity actually. The reasons are as below. 1. All these measurements had not actually took into account the effects of the refraction index of atmospheric matter and the corona of the solar surface on the deflected light. 2. The measurements of visible light’s deflection were inaccurate and the obtained data had very large dispersion 3. The deviation caused by the fluctuation and refraction of the atmosphere on the earth's surface is not considered enough 4. The complex statistical methods such as the least square method and various parameters fitting were used to make the measured data consistent with the predictions of Einstein's theory, instead of directly observing the prediction values of Einstein's theory. 5. For the interference measurements of radio waves, the relative observation methods were used rather than the direct observation method, and interpretation of measurement results depended on theoretical models. In fact, astronomers tend to assume in advance that Einstein's theory was true, then by introducing a series of parameters to fit the measurements, so that the measurements always meet the Einstein's predictions. According to this method, a set of parameters can also be found to fit the measurement data so that the deflection of light can also satisfy the prediction of Newtonian gravity. The results are not unique. The conclusion of this paper is that the measurements of light’s gravity deflection of general relativity were invalid. In fact, according to the authors' published paper, general relativity did not predict that light in the solar gravitational field would be deflated by twice as much as the prediction of the Newton's theory of gravity. How could the observations detect such deflection?

Keywords: General relativity, Newtonian theory of gravity, gravitational deflection of light, radio astronomy, solar atmosphere, corona, least square method

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