Astrophysical Event at the Galactic Center Appears to Counter the Gravitational Light Bending Rule of General Relativity

Significant findings pertaining to events taking place at the center of the Milky Way galaxy appear to counter the gravitational light bending rule of General Relativity. Intense observations have been made on the light emitted from rapidly moving stars that are orbiting about an apparent super massive object located in a region of our galaxy known as Sagittarius A*, the center of the Milky Way galaxy. For the past 15 years now the astrophysicists have focused on this event and have estimated that this super massive object, believed to be a point-like Black Hole, is about 3.6 million times the mass of our entire solar system. The most significant finding of this research is that this astrophysical phenomenon appears to counter the gravitational light bending rule of General Relativity and does not appear to exhibit any evidence of lensing of rays of light emitted from the rapidly moving star light sources that are orbiting about the galactic center mass.

An additional finding shows that the design of modern lensing tools, frequently used by the astrophysicists to estimate the gravitational lensing effects, seriously ignore important fundamental principles in optics and gravitation. Convincing observational evidence at the site of Sagittarius A*, the galactic center, appears to confirm this finding. It is revealed with convincing observational evidence that the theory pertaining to the gravitational lensing of light rays passing near the "point-like" gravitating mass clearly violates fundamental principles of optics, namely the fundamental principle of reciprocity of optical lensing and the fundamental tool of Gauss' Law. This is a principle of enclosing a gravitating mass inside of an analytical spherical surface, a principle anomalous to that of the Gauss Law of enclosing an electrical charge inside of a Gaussian surface used in Classical Electrodynamics. These findings suggest that an incorrect understanding of the gravitational lensing of light rays still prevails. The past 15 years of intense observations on the events at the site of Sagittarius A* clearly show a severe lack of evidence for gravitational lensing.

Details on this event have been published in the highly esteemed and renown refereed journal, the Astronomische Nachrichten (English title: Astronomical Notes). The title of the article is: "Time resolved images from the center of the Galaxy appear to counter General Relativity," Dowdye, Jr., E.H., Astronomische Nachrichten, Volume 328, Issue 2, Date: February 2007, Pages 186-191.

The Author is Dr. Edward H. Dowdye, Jr., a physicist and laser optics engineer currently at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland.

The article can be accessed on-line at http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/search/allsearch by searching under author: Dowdye

For more details see: http://www.extinctionshift.com/SignificantFindings.htm

For editor's information: The author's curriculum vitae: http://www.extinctionshift.com/author.htm