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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.
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.
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:
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
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).