If Gravitational lensing is real why cant we see the sun during a solar eclipse? Why doesn't the suns light follow the curve of space created by the moon and become visible to us?
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3 Answers
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The light is gravitationally lensed - by a very small amount. The fact that eclipses happen proves nothing one way or another; even if gravitational lensing did not occur, all that means is that the Moon could be slightly further away from the Earth and still block out the light from the Sun at a spot on the Earth.
A ray of light from the Sun passing close to the limb of the Moon is deflected by about $10^{-10}$ degrees.
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It is because there is not enough mass to create a gravity effect that is large enough to see gravitational lensing. The majority of gravitational lensing that we see is from galaxies where there is massive amounts of matter between us and the source. During a solar eclipse there is only the moon between us in the sun while there can be several galaxies or dark matter between us and a galaxy.
Just to put some numbers to this the mass of the moon is 3.69*10^-8 solar mass and the mass of the milky way galaxy is estimated to have a mass on the order of 10^11 solar mass(source:https://www.quora.com/How-do-scientists-estimate-the-mass-of-the-Milky-Way-Galaxy).
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The moon doesn't have enough mass for it's gravitational effect on light to be noticeable.
