Question

1) What question does the solar eclipse experiment attempt to answer? Discuss why there must be two observations and how far apart they should be. How did the results of the experiment lead to the idea that the Universe is curved?

2) Discuss the concept of the exit cone associated with a black hole. Why does the exit cone open up as the distance from the black hole increases?

3) What is the difference between real and virtual particles? Discuss how the idea of gravity waves came about given the assumption that gravity works the same way as the electromagnetic force. In other words, gravity should have both real and virtual particles just like the electromagnetic force does.

4) How many quarks are there? What is color as it is associated with quarks? What does it mean for a particle to be color neutral? How many blue quarks can there be in a proton? Why?

Answer 1

As per regulations i can only provide solution to one problem at a time. As you have not mentioned which problem to solve i am solving the first problem in the given set.

1) The solar eclipse experiment attemepted to prove the hypothesis that light doesn't travel in a straight line and light rays travel in a curved path when subjected to massive bodies such as stars or black holes. There must be two observations for a single star because of the phenomenon of gravitational lensing which was predicted in General Theory of Relativity. The distance these two observations should be apart from each other depends on the mass of the body being considered in this case the mass of our sun. Due to the presence of massive bodies across the universe there is curvature of space-time all across the universe and the light rays don't travel in straight lines due to the above listed phenomenon and hence this led to the idea that the universe is curved.