Gravity vs. Light

The Shapiro effect is a huge non sequitur here. It is a measured effect of time delay. It is not the formula to use for gravitational redshift.Also the Shapiro effect would cancel out for distant sources. You would be just as likely to have massive bodies on either side along the path towards us. The effect is small anyway.The formula is Delta T = SUM (-2GM(i)Ln(1-X.R)/c^3) where M(i) is the ith peturber and X and R are unit vectors from us to the source and us to the observer.Plug in numbers and you see the effects are in microseconds versus travel times of years to Gigayears. Anyway you would need a huge amount more mass than is observed in conjunction with a huge assymetry of this mass to have a decent delay.But this is a moot point. It does not give a redhsift/blueshift.For that to be the case you have to use the gravitational redshift formula which is not a logarithmic dependence.Redshift = SquareRoot(1-2GM/Rc^2).As you can see that drops of as 1/R from an object. Even at the surface of the Sun this is a very small fractional change.But even this is moot. Because light from a distant source would go through these very small changes both ways. It would be slightly blueshifted as it falls down the potential of the peturber and then the same shift to the red as it leaves the potential - thus canceling out.Also due to the 1/R relationship you would need these ridiculous amounts of massive peturbers along the line of sight even if the shift was only red. This is ruled out from many other observations.In summary - NEVER GET YOUR SCIENCE FROM JERROLD THACKER'S GOOFY WEBSITE.I had some email correspondence with him a couple of years ago pointing out many physics errors on his site. He was rude from the get go. He is an old crank lost in his own world of psuedo physics and just wont listen to the obvious.

Why would it cancel out. The blueshift falling in the Earth's potential well is all but unobservable. Remember the Pound/Rebka experiment. It can only be done with a very sensitive experiment.The formula is Redshift = SQRT[1-2GM/Rc^2].Plug in the numbers - the shift is of the order of parts in 10^-14.Whereas a redhsift from say a quasar is of the order 0.1 to 6.

The Shapiro effect is real. It is measured in the solar system from the delay of transmissions to space vehicles.My argument is thata) this effect has nothing to do with red/blue shifting - which has a different functional dependenceb) The delay from a distant source would only arithmetically increase if you had many close encounters with massive objects along the way and these objects would also really need to be assymetrically distributed to some extent.Also the value of these delays is tiny compared to the travel times and also provide no information. You cannot tell the mass of an individual peturber - or even if any delay occurred since all wavelengths are affected the same it is an observational degeneracy.

Well my original point was that the Shapiro effect is a huge non sequitur anyway.The website that Crackerjack posted is run by a crank called Jerrold Thacker. If you take the time to peruse the site there is some really cranky material on there - not just the Shapiro effect stuff. I agree it is a real effect - but it doesn't have the effect Thacker wants it to have. But some of his other stuff is pure off the wall fantasy.

*bump* for boredom sake.