Originally Posted By: Bill 6
I believe that the phrase is merely an extravagant description of a gravitational field employed in order to impress us commoners ergo a contradiction of his suggestion that we should keep things as simple as possible.

One of the problems with saying that is that when Einstein developed the idea of curved spacetime he also adapted some very good math that fully described it. GR and the math that describe it have been tested over and over ever since he presented the General theory of Relativity (GR). The theory just keeps passing those tests. Since the math and the tests all depend on curved spacetime I don't think that it is just intended to "impress us commoners", it is a very real description of how the universe works.

As far as light being absorbed and re-emitted by matter in between the source and our instruments. Well, that is a well understood phenomenon, and is used to determine the composition and quantity of matter in the way. However, the red shift of the light from distant galaxies is a completely different thing. The characteristics are much different. Absorption/emission causes discrete shifts in wavelength of light. Red shift causes all wavelengths of light to shift in the same manner. It does not cause different wavelengths to shift in different ways. So absorption/emission does not explain the galactic red shift.

Bill Gill

C is not the speed of light in a vacuum.
C is the universal speed limit.