Einstein said gravity doesn’t just pull things. It actually bends the shape of space and time itself, and light has to follow that curve.
🏛️ Must Know
All Three Phenomena Are Genuine Predictions
- Light Is Affected by Gravity General Relativity genuinely predicts that light is affected by gravity. It bends as it passes massive objects.
- Expanding Universe General Relativity genuinely underlies the modern understanding of a constantly expanding universe.
- Matter Warps Space-Time General Relativity genuinely predicts that matter warps its surrounding space-time, which we experience as gravity.
- Correct Answer All three are genuine predictions. The correct answer is 1, 2 and 3.
Good to Know
📘 Good to Know
How Gravity Bending Light Was Actually Confirmed
- Gravitational Lensing When light bends around a massive object like a black hole or galaxy, the effect is called gravitational lensing.
- Confirmed During an Eclipse Einstein’s prediction about light bending near the Sun was first confirmed during a solar eclipse in 1919.
- Gravitational Waves Also Predicted General Relativity also predicts gravitational waves, ripples in space-time, which LIGO directly detected for the first time in 2015.
📝 Previous Year Questions
UPSC CSP 2018 — What General Relativity Actually Predicts
- UPSC 2018 General Relativity genuinely predicts that light is affected by gravity, that the universe expands, and that matter warps space-time. See UPSC CSP 2018 GS Paper I, Q62. View this question.
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Great to Know
🌟 Great to Know
Why General Relativity Still Matters Every Day
- Needed for GPS to Work GPS satellites must correct for General Relativity’s time-dilation effects, or their positioning would drift by kilometres daily.
- Explains Black Holes General Relativity also predicts black holes, regions of space-time curved so extremely that nothing can escape.
- Connects to Other PYQ Facts This same space-time framework also underlies UPSC questions on gravitational wave detectors like eLISA and LIGO.
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