Date: Consolidate Your Learning Answer the following questions to check your understanding of the general theory of relativity. 1. Further evidence for the general theory of relativity comes from the way light Star bends as it passes by a massive object like the Sun. (a) On the diagram on the right, sketch the path of a ray of light from the distant star as the ray passes by the Sun and reaches Earth. (b) To an observer on Earth, the star appears to be located along a straight line in the same direction as where they see the light coming from. Draw the star's apparent location on the diagram. Sun Earth 2. In 1919, astronomers took a photograph of the stars near the Sun during a solar eclipse. They compared this photograph to previous images taken at night when the Sun was not distorting the line of sight. Why did the astronomers need the solar eclipse, and what did they see that convinced them that the general theory of relativity was correct? There are several stars orbiting the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way galaxy. 3. The black hole is more than 4 million times the mass of the Sun. Predict two observations that we would expect to see and explain the significance of the observations. Your friend says that observations of Mercury's orbit show that Einstein was right and Newton was 4. wrong, so we should never use Newton's model of gravity. Evaluate this claim