Does light bending doubly violate the equivalence

A corollary to the EP says -

If there is enough distance between the walls of your room for you to be able to tell the difference, then your experiment is invalid - you must move the walls closer. Once you have moved the walls close enough that your instruments can no longer detect a difference, the exiperiment becomes valid again.

LB

(I'm not kidding, but I have reworded it a bit)

Wisp, Case 1 seems clear to me but I'm confused as to why Case 2 would be as you say? Why would the light fall more than the room if they are both falling at the same rate?

Wisp,

This "corollary" to the EP may make all experimental refutations of the EP invalid, but that's not the whole story. The EP is about a special case that can be approximated but not achieved in reality.

In the real world there are a number of experiments (possibly yours as well) that can be used to measure the difference between a real gravitational force field and real rocket powered acceleration.

LB

Jim

In case 2 the rocket is stationary on the earth and so the bending of light is due to gravity pulling it down. The room is not in freefall.
Does light get bent by gravity's pull only, or does it bend doubly due to refraction?


wisp

- particles of nothingness

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Larry Burford</i>
<br />Wisp,

This "corollary" to the EP may make all experimental refutations of the EP invalid, but that's not the whole story. The EP is about a special case that can be approximated but not achieved in reality.

In the real world there are a number of experiments (possibly yours as well) that can be used to measure the difference between a real gravitational force field and real rocket powered acceleration.

LB

<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

I know that the curvature of the earth causes falling objects to move closer as they fall, and so the gravity field is not ideal. But in this case if we modelled the earth as infinitely flat so its gravity field was uniformly straight, would light still bend doubly and violate the EP?


wisp

- particles of nothingness