The general theory of relativity predicts black holes

The Equivalence Principle

According to Newtons theory of gravity, an apple falls to the floor because

the force of gravity pulls the apple down. But Einstein pointed out that the
apple would appear to behave in exactly the same way in space, far from
the gravitational influence of any planet or star, if the floor were to
accelerate upward (in other words, if the floor came up to meet the
apple).

This is an example of Einsteins equivalence principle, which states that in a

small volume of space, the downward pull of gravity can be accurately
and completely duplicated by an upward acceleration of the observer.

The equivalence principle is the key to the general theory of relativity. It

allowed Einstein to focus entirely on motion, rather than force, in discussing
gravity. A hallmark of gravity is that it causes the same acceleration no
matter the mass of the object. For example, a baseball and a cannon ball
have very different masses, but if you drop them side by side in a vacuum,
they accelerate downward at exactly the same rate. To explain this
observation, Einstein envisioned gravity as being caused by a curvature of
space.

In fact, his general theory of relativity describes gravity entirely in terms of

the geometry of both space and time, that is, of spacetime. Far from a
source of gravity, like a planet or a star, spacetime is flat and clocks tick
at their normal rate. Closer to a source of gravity, however, space is curved
and clocks slow down.

Testing the General Theory

Einsteins general theory of relativity and its picture of curved spacetime

have been tested in a variety of different ways. In what follows we discuss
some key experimental tests of the theory.

Experimental Test 1: The gravitational bending of light. Light rays naturally

travel in straight lines. But if the space through which the rays travel is
curved, as happens when light passes near the surface of a massive object
like the Sun, the paths of the rays will likewise be curved. In other words,
gravity should bend light rays, an effect not predicted by Newtonian
mechanics because light has no mass.
This prediction was first tested in 1919 during a total solar eclipse. During
totality, when the Moon blocked out the Suns disk, astronomers
photographed the stars around the Sun. Careful measurements afterward
revealed that the stars around the Sun were shifted from their usual positions
by an amount consistent with Einsteins theory.

Experimental Test 2: The precession of Mercurys orbit. As the planet

Mercury moves along its elliptical orbit, the orbit itself slowly changes
orientation or precesses. Most of Mercurys precession is caused by the
gravitational pull of the other planets, as explained by Newtonian
mechanics. But once the effects of all the other planets had been
accounted for, there remained an unexplained excess rotation of
Mercurys major axis of 43 arcsec per century. Although this discrepancy
may seem very small, it frustrated astronomers for half a century. Some
astronomers searched for a missing planet even closer to the Sun that might
be tugging on Mercury; none has ever been found. Einstein showed that at
Mercurys position close to the Sun, the general theory of relativity predicts
a small correction to Newtons description of gravity. This correction is just
enough to account for the excess precession.

Experimental Test 3: The gravitational slowing of time and the gravitational

red shift. In the general theory of relativity, a massive object such as Earth
warps time as well as space. Einstein predicted that clocks on the ground
floor of a building should tick slightly more slowly than clocks on the top
floor, which are farther from Earth.

A light wave can be thought of as a clock; just as a clock makes a steady

number of ticks per minute, an observer sees a steady number of complete
cycles of a light wave passing by each second. If a light beam is aimed
straight up from the ground floor of a building, an observer at the top floor
will measure a slow-ticking light wave with a lower frequency, and thus a
longer wavelength, than will an observer on the ground floor.

The increase in wavelength means that a photon reaching the top floor has
less energy than when it left the ground floor. These effects, which have no
counterpart in Newtons theory of gravity, are called the gravitational
redshift.

Be careful not to confuse the gravitational redshift with a Doppler shift. In

the Doppler Effect, redshifts are caused by a light source moving away from
an observer. Gravitational redshifts, by contrast, are caused by time flowing
at different rates at different locations. No motion is involved.
The American physicists Robert Pound and Glen Rebka first measured the
gravitational redshift in 1960 using gamma rays fired between the top and
bottom of a shaft 20 meters tall.
Because Earths gravity is relatively weak, the redshift that they measured

was very small ( = 2.51015 ) but was in complete agreement with
Einsteins prediction.

Much larger shifts are seen in the spectra of white dwarfs, whose spectral
lines are redshifted as light climbs out of the white dwarfs intense surface
gravity. As an example, the gravitational redshift of the spectral lines of the

white dwarf Sirius B is ( = 3.0104), which also agrees with the general
theory of relativity.

Experimental Test 4: Gravitational waves. Electric charges oscillating up and

down in a radio transmitters antenna produce electromagnetic radiation.
In a similar way, the general theory of relativity predicts that oscillating
massive objects should produce gravitational radiation, or gravitational
waves. (Newtons theory of gravity makes no such prediction.)

Gravitational radiation is exceedingly difficult to detect, because it is by

nature much weaker than electromagnetic radiation. Although physicists
have built a number of sensitive antennas for gravitational radiation, no
confirmed detections have been made as of this writing (2009). But
compelling indirect evidence for the existence of gravitational radiation
has come from a binary system of two neutron stars. Russell Hulse and
Joseph Taylor at the University of Massachusetts discovered that these stars
are slowly spiraling toward each other and losing energy in the process. The
rate at which they lose energy is just what would be expected if the two
neutron stars are emitting gravitational radiation as predicted by Einstein.
Hulse and Taylor shared the 1993 Nobel Prize in physics for their discovery.

The general theory of relativity has never made an incorrect prediction. It

now stands as our most accurate and complete description of gravity.
Einstein demonstrated that Newtonian mechanics is accurate only when
applied to low speeds and weak gravity. If extremely high speeds or
powerful gravity are involved, only a calculation using relativity will give
correct answers.
Relativity and Black Holes

Perhaps the most dramatic prediction of the general theory of relativity

concerns what happens when a large amount of matter is concentrated in
a small volume. We have seen that if a dying star is not too massive, it ends
up as a white dwarf star. If the dying star is more massive than the
Chandrasekhar limit of about 1.4 M, it cannot exist as a stable white dwarf
star and, instead, shrinks down to form a neutron star. But if the dying star
has more mass than the maximum permissible for a neutron star, about 2 to
3 M, not even the internal pressure of neutrons can hold the star up
against its own gravity, and the star contracts rapidly.

As the stars matter becomes compressed to enormous densities, the

strength of gravity at the surface of this rapidly shrinking sphere also
increases dramatically. According to the general theory of relativity, the
space immediately surrounding the star becomes so highly curved that it
closes on itself.
Photons flying outward at an angle from the stars surface arc back inward,
while photons that fly straight outward undergo such a strong gravitational
redshift that they lose all their energy and cease to exist.

Ordinary matter can never travel as fast as light. Hence, if light cannot
escape from the collapsing star, neither can anything else. An object from
which neither matter nor electromagnetic radiation can escape is called a
black hole. In a sense, a hole is punched in the fabric of the universe, and
the dying star disappears into this cavity.

None of the stars mass is lost when it collapses to form a black hole,
however. This mass gives the spacetime around the black hole its strong
curvature. Thanks to this curvature, the black holes gravitational influence
can still be felt by other objects.

Some low-quality science-fiction movies and books suggest that black holes
are evil things that go around gobbling up everything in the universe. Not
so! The bizarre effects created by highly warped spacetime are limited to a
region quite near the hole. For example, the effects of the general theory of
relativity predominate only within 1000 km of a 10- M black hole. Beyond
1000 km, gravity is weak enough that Newtonian physics can adequately
describe everything. If our own Sun somehow turned into a black hole (an
event that, happily, seems to be quite impossible), the orbits of the planets
would hardly be affected at all.
Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of black holes is that they really exist!
As we will see, astronomers have located a number of black holes with
masses a few times that of the Sun. What is truly amazing is that they have
also discovered many truly immense black holes containing millions or
billions of solar masses. These discoveries are a resounding confirmation of
the ideas of the general theory of relativity.

BIOLOGY:

The formation and function of molecules depend on chemical bonding

between atoms.

Atoms with incomplete valence shells can interact with certain other atoms
in such a way that each partner atom completes its valence shell: The
atoms either share or transfer valence electrons. These interactions usually
result in atoms staying close together, held by attractions called chemical
bonds. The strongest kinds of chemical bonds are covalent bonds and ionic
bonds in dry ionic compounds. (Ionic bonds in aqueous, or water-based,
solutions are weak interactions)

Covalent Bonds

A covalent bond is the sharing of a pair of valence electrons by two atoms.

Two or more atoms held together by covalent bonds constitute a molecule,
in this case a hydrogen molecule.
Electron sharing can be depicted by an electron distribution diagram or by
a Lewis dot structure, in which element symbols are surrounded by dots that
represent the valence electrons (H : H). We can also use a structural
formula, H-H, where the line represents a single bond, a pair of shared
electrons. A space-filling model comes closest to representing the actual
shape of the molecule.

Oxygen has 6 electrons in its second electron shell and therefore needs 2
more electrons to complete its valence shell. Two oxygen atoms form a
molecule by sharing two pairs of valence electrons. The atoms are thus
joined by what is called a double bond (O=O).