Talk:Introduction to general relativity

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Introduction to general relativity is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so.

This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on April 18, 2010.

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Date	Process	Result
July 7, 2007	WikiProject peer review	Reviewed
July 24, 2007	Featured article candidate	Promoted
September 24, 2008	Featured article review	Kept

Current status: Featured article

Physics: Relativity High‑importance

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Edits of this day

As a former prof in the physical sciences, and so nearer to the average reader than an astrophysicist, I have to disagree with the foregoing assessment. Per the tags of this day, the article reads like a professorial or graduate essay, written by one or ones with great confidence in their knowledge base, and without a felt need to provide the sources for the stated facts and perspectives that appear. This is not WP policy.

The content of this article, even watered down as it is form the main article, is not common knowledge, certainly for no complete body of students that I have dealt with (though I have been at fine institutions), and not for my 15 year old science-studying nephew, who's is the clearer target of encyclopedic science articles.

No, one citation per paragraph, offering broad ideas of places for Further reading—this is not sourcing of content to the experts from which the material is drawn. One has to conclude that the individuals writing this perceive themselves as adequately expert to craft this final text, without having to anchor its facts and perspectives in good secondary sources. But again, this is not Wikipedia policy.

References to secondary sources, within a page or two of the fact or perspective being cited. And all facts and perspectives sourced. These are the reasonable WP expectations of encyclopedic writing, even for articles that have had no history of approaching their topics truly in an encyclopedic way.

In any case, happy holiday. The anniversary, that is. And the national one as well.

Le Prof Leprof 7272 (talk) 03:34, 26 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I was not involved in writing this article and have very little interest in this topic, except for protecting a WP:FA from rogue editing. Leprof 7272, your long message says almost nothing, please focus and provide specific comments on the article content. Your "refimprove" and "no footnotes" tags are not appropriate: the article contains ample amount of footnotes and no facts challenged with "citation needed". As to the comment by IP:73.210.154.39, Template:Page_numbers_improve is just a template, not a policy or guideline. Many cited chapters are several pages long; while I agree that more specific page numbers would help the reader, the citation is not dire. Materialscientist (talk) 03:43, 26 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

gravitational frequency shift of light

I thought I was following things fairly well until I got to the "gravitational frequency shift of light" paragraph. I just may not be very smart, but the fact that gravity would have any effect on light is a surprise to me. An "object in a gravitational field should feel a gravitational force proportional to its mass" -- that makes sense to me. But if that means that light has mass, maybe that should be discussed a little. Also, an explanation of why the gravitational force changes the frequency, rather than just changing the direction of the light beam.

Fulto006 (talk) 01:22, 28 December 2015 (UTC) Not a Professional Physicist[reply]

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Suggestion For New Diagram

I would find it helpful if someone made an additional diagram. You've all seen it: It's the one that looks like a mattress with a bowling ball in the middle. The x=constant and y=constant lines are straight near the edge, but curve downward near the middle. This diagram would explain in an intuitive way why a planet orbits the sun: it simply follows a geodesic on the curved surface. MathPerson (talk) 20:37, 18 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

What I meant was something like the output of this Mathematica plot:

Plot3D[-Exp[-.2 (x^2 + y^2)], {x, -5, 5}, {y, -5, 5}, PlotRange -> All, Axes -> None, Boxed -> False, PlotPoints -> {30, 30}] MathPerson (talk) 23:00, 18 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

It would be nice if there was a correct diagram.

I have been searching and searching. Finally I found that the image with the rectangular grid is completely wrong like most images which are used all over the web.

If I'm right; “Relative to an observer at rest far from a black hole, space is compressed (contracted) near the event horizon and time is stretched out (dilated).”.

This means that a grid seen from the point of view looking at the website should have smaller segments closer to the mass opposite to the image of an stretches sheet ( with larger segments ). The solution to do it right would be to show a radial sheet instead of this one.

If the above statement is correct it would also be nice to use it in the text. Everyone always states that clocks are running slow in a gravitational field but generally space is omitted and that was why I was searching. It is correct that clocks are running slow but you have to switch it around to compare it to the way we see space. On time you have to think; slow is more time ... is less grid lines is bigger cell's. Maybe as full sentence with the usual running slower;

“Relative to an observer at rest far from a black hole, space is compressed (contracted) near the event horizon and time is stretched out (dilated / running slower).”.

I believe this would make things much clearer.

The best thing would be to show images with what space does, what time does and what the world lines do in different scenarios; black hole with or without speed or rotation, object falling in with speed or without speed and light. I think that this would really clear things for people with a medium understanding.