I was reading A.P.French's Special relativity and came across a table of evidence bearing on the nature of light:
I don't get why Bradley's discovery of stellar aberration supports particle theory of light?
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2 Answers
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Consider a star directly over the North Pole. According to particle model you can think of the light as a rain of particles coming straight down from the star. If you point your telescope (essentially a tube) directly at the star the light particles (or at least some of them) coming straight down will hit the side of the inside of the tube as it moves sideways relative to the light particles. To make sure all the particles make it from the top to the bottom of the tube you have to angle it slightly towards the direction of the Earth's motion. It might be easier to picture if you imagine raindrops falling straight down rather than light.
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Yes M.Enns is true. The particle model is essential even to explain stellar aberration within non-relativistic framework. In relativistic domain the aberration has to include effects of length contraction and time dilation so that we get the relation between altitude of star as measured by two observers in relative motion. Go through this link to observe relativistic aberration effects. https://www.fourmilab.ch/cship/aberration.html
