Robert "The Bobby Yaga" McNees @mcnees.bsky.social · 10/10/2026Einstein promised to present Schwarzschild’s result to a meeting of the Berlin Academy the following week. Both of them understood that actual astrophysical objects rotate, but that this solution would be an excellent approximation to the gravitational field of planets and stars. 1210
Robert "The Bobby Yaga" McNees @mcnees.bsky.social · 10/10/2026For instance, you can approximate the gravitational field outside the Sun with Schwarzschild’s solution. Its null geodesics — paths followed by light rays — describe the deflection of light in the sun’s spacetime geometry pretty well! 1200
Robert "The Bobby Yaga" McNees @mcnees.bsky.social · 10/10/2026(Nowadays we can test general relativity with enough precision to tell that that Earth’s gravitational field is not exactly described by Schwarzschild’s solution: einstein.stanford.edu )einstein.stanford.eduGravity Probe B: Testing Einstein's Universe 2190