Have you ever thought........???

Suppose a laser beam is shot horizontally will it curve downwards towards earth because of gravity?


Technically, the answer to this question is yes. But for all practical purposes, it's no. Let me explain...

For most practical purposes, light moves in a straight line. However, it does bend a little due to gravity. The small curvature of light passing near the Sun was first observed in 1919. The agreement of that curvature with the prediction of General Relativity was the first big piece of evidence for General Relativity. However, the curvature near the Earth is much smaller even than near the Sun, because the Earth is very small compared to the Sun. Really big curvature of light by gravity occurs near the strange objects called black holes, which were also predicted by General Relativity. 

So yes, the light ray from your laser will technically be bent by the earth's gravity. But no, the effect will not be enough to be noticeable.

To gather more information you can go to ...............http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_lens

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