gravity

@maxdancona,

Quote:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn3232-first-speed-of-gravity-measurement-revealed.html#.VRbKn3W9_3A

There is overwhelming amount of evidence that gravity travels a C, and every experiment we do adds more.

Do tell:

Quote:

Ed Fomalont of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Charlottesville, Virginia, and Sergei Kopeikin of the University of Missouri in Columbia made the measurement, with the help of the planet Jupiter.

"We became the first two people to know the speed of gravity, one of the fundamental constants of nature," the scientists say, in an article in New Scientist print edition

Why do you believe THAT claim? It has been refuted, as Carlip acknowledges, implicitly:

Quote:

“Einstein may be correct about the speed of gravity but the experiment in question neither confirms nor refutes this,” says Samuel. “In effect, the experiment was measuring effects associated with the propagation of light, not the speed of gravity.”

http://www2.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/Phys-speed-of-gravity.html

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@maxdancona,

Quote:

We already know that it is not infinite.

Van Flandern does not claim that it is:

Quote:

It might be tempting to conclude that the speed of gravity is infinite. But these limits on are still a long way from infinite velocity, and Newton’s statement, quoted at the beginning of this paper, still seems applicable.

The statement in question is:

Quote:

Perhaps no one has so elegantly expressed the objection to such a concept better than Sir Isaac Newton: “That one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum, without the mediation of any thing else, by and through which their action and force may be conveyed from one to the other, is to me so great an absurdity, that I believe no man who has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking, can ever fall into it.”

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@FBM,

The photon dosnt age fbm because at c theres no time and there for no space. So no time no ref frame. No ordinary ref frame means the ref is zero. Thats what I read anyway.

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@maxdancona,

Quote:

There is overwhelming amount of evidence that gravity travels a C, and every experiment we do adds more.

Really? Carlip says:

Quote:

Are there future prospects for a direct measurement of the speed of gravity? One possibility would involve detection of gravitational waves from a supernova. The detection of gravitational radiation in the same time frame as a neutrino burst, followed by a later visual identification of a supernova, would be considered strong experimental evidence for the speed of gravity being equal to the speed of light. However, unless a very nearby supernova occurs soon, it will be some time before gravitational wave detectors are expected to be sensitive enough to perform such a test.

It is my understanding that, despite extreme measures having been taken to "discover" gravitational waves, they have never been detected, notwithstanding some premature claims to the contrary:

Quote:

Feb 6, 2015 08:05 PM ET
It’s official: data from the Planck satellite has revealed no signs of gravitational waves embedded in the cosmic microwave background, the primordial ‘echo’ of the Big Bang that occurred nearly 14 billion years ago.

This landmark result contradicts the now-infamous BICEP2 announcement of the discovery of gravitational waves last March....

http://news.discovery.com/space/astronomy/bicep2-vs-planck-will-gravitational-waves-be-found-150206.htm

I find it interesting that you assume that I "chose to believe" something. You are the one who said it was a "sure thing" that gravity propagates at the speed of light, not me.

I merely noted that it was a matter of debate. Your (continued) response was to the effect that it was NOT debatable, and has been proven. Who's the one "choosing to believe" here?

1 Reply

@layman,

Quote:

I merely noted that it was a matter of debate. Your (continued) response was to the effect that it was NOT debatable, and has been proven. Who's the one "choosing to believe" here?

Everything is a matter of debate. There are people who still think the Earth is flat.

The scientific consensus is that gravity propagates the speed of light, that humans evolved from earlier species and that smoking causes cancer. You can find people on the internet who disagree with any of these.

You can choose to believe whatever you want.

2 Replies

@maxdancona,

Quote:

The scientific consensus is that gravity propagates the speed of light...

I find it interesting that people often claim "scientific consensus" for the position they choose to take. Have you looked at the "string theory" thread I started? As was noted there, there simply is no "consensus" for such widely referenced hypotheses as the "standard model" in particle physics.

Likewise, there are many who question the validity of general relativity. It certainly does create conflicts with quantum mechanics. String theory, which was developed in an attempt to eliminate that conflict, is itself HIGHLY controversial.

I likewise find it interesting that some people will repeatedly make bold assertions, in a cocksure manner, that their preferred beliefs have been "proven," as you have. You said Carlip's article "explained" everything, which it doesn't, but beyond that, you obviously overlooked his clearly-stated basis for his conclusions. It was NOT on the basis of experimental evidence, but rather on deduction from unproven premises.

Your attempt to equate anyone who questions YOUR beliefs with those who claim the earth is flat is rather revealing, but not convincing.

0 Replies

@maxdancona,

More from Van Flandern's abstract (fully addressed in the body of his published paper) which I originally omitted:

Quote:

General relativity (GR) explains these features by suggesting that gravitation (unlike electromagnetic forces) is a pure geometric effect of curved space-time, not a force of nature that propagates...

Problems with the causality principle also exist for GR in this connection, such as explaining how the external fields between binary black holes manage to continually update without benefit of communication with the masses hidden behind event horizons. These causality problems would be solved without any change to the mathematical formalism of GR, but only to its interpretation...

Such a change of perspective requires no change in the assumed character of gravitational radiation or its lightspeed propagation....Indeed, far from upsetting much of current physics, the main changes induced by this new perspective are beneficial to areas where physics has been struggling, such as explaining experimental evidence for non-locality in quantum physics, the dark matter issue in cosmology, and the possible unification of forces.

Recognition of a faster-than-lightspeed propagation of gravity, as indicated by all existing experimental evidence, may be the key to taking conventional physics to the next plateau.

Your dismissal of this as "nonsense," a conclusion you apparently arrived at by noting that this peer-reviewed paper was RE-published on the internet, does not either (1) settle the matter, or for that matter, (2) even address the issues raised.

1 Reply

@layman,

Could gravity be a matter effect on nonlocality. So that the beond c nature of gravity is similar to the effects of nonlocality we see in spooky action at a distance.

4 Replies

@martinies,

Quote:

Could gravity be a matter effect on nonlocality. So that the beond c nature of gravity is similar to the effects of nonlocality we see in spooky action at a distance.

I really wouldn't know, but the author I quoted seems to be suggesting something like that.

Quote:

Indeed, far from upsetting much of current physics, the main changes induced by this new perspective are beneficial to areas where physics has been struggling, such as explaining experimental evidence for non-locality in quantum physics, the dark matter issue in cosmology, and the possible unification of forces.

Recognition of a faster-than-lightspeed propagation of gravity, as indicated by all existing experimental evidence, may be the key to taking conventional physics to the next plateau....Quantum phenomena that violate the locality criterion may now be welcomed into conventional physics.

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@martinies,

By the way, as Van Flandern points out, the proposition that the speed of light cannot be exceeded has never been proven (it was simply postulated, as an axiom, by Einstein for special relativity--which he later abandoned). Nor is that postulate in any way required to make the predictions that SR makes.

Each and every experiment which is said to "confirm" SR also "confirms" what he calls LR (Lorentizian relativity). But good luck trying to get the average poster on this site understand that. I started a thread about special relativity which was almost universally condemned by posters making rank assertions which they couldn't defend. The dogmatism in "science" can be every bit as strong as it can be in matters of religion (or any other area of "knowledge").

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@martinies,

Subsequent to the paper I cited, Van Flandern, jointly with Jean-Pierre Vigier (who was an assistant to Louis de Broglie and was also invited to be an assistant to Einstein but had to decline) wrote a paper called "Experimental Repeal of the Speed Limit for Gravitational, Electrodynamic, and Quantum Field Interactions." It was published in "Foundations of Physics." That paper may address your question more directly. Here's the abstract:

Quote:

General relativity has a geometric and a field interpretation. If angular momentum conservation is invoked in the geometric interpretation to explain experiments, the causality principle is violated. The field interpretation avoids this problem by allowing faster-than-light propagation of gravity in forward time. All existing experiments are in agreement with that interpretation. This implies the existence of real superluminal propagation and communication of particles and fields, free of causality problems. The introduction of real physical faster-than-light propagation into gravitation, electrodynamics and quantum theory has important consequences for physics

The entire paper is probably on the net, but I can't readily find a link that doesn't require a subscription.

According to wiki, "Jean-Pierre Vigier was a theoretical physicist, known for his work on the foundations of physics, and in particular on his stochastic interpretation of quantum physics."

Here's another paper that you might want to look into if you're really interested in the question: Walker, W.D., “Superluminal propagation speed of longitudinally oscillating electrical fields”, abstract in Causality and Locality in Modern Physics and Astronomy: Open Questions and Possible Solutions, S. Jeffers, ed., York University, North York, Ontario, #72 (1997).

1 Reply

@layman,

Laymen, how much Physics have you actually studied in college? I am guessing not very much.

There is this idea that anyone can just read a couple of papers on the internet and then contribute to physics without doing any of the work of doing things like learning differential equations.

Modern Physics has been developed over several hundred years. It involves ideas based on other ideas... all of this dependent on increasingly complex mathematics. These mathematics have been incredibly useful in making predictions and even in creating the latest technology.

You can actually learn enough about Physics and mathematics to actually understand, and even make contributions to the field. But to get to this point, 7 years of study in advanced mathematics and science to understand the advancements that have already been made.

The internet is filled with discredited theories... including Lorentzian relativity.. and ideas and peer reviewed papers.

You can't just throw around abstracts of papers. You can find "peer reviewed" papers on all sorts of things... and to understand what these papers are actually saying requires that you not only read the actual paper (which you are obviously not doing), it also requires that you have the background in the math.

There are those of us on this board that actually have advanced science degrees and have actually done the work to understand the mathematics behind these discussions.

2 Replies

@maxdancona,

Nice speech. I also take notice that you do not answer questions, such as:

Quote:

Why do you believe THAT claim? It has been refuted, as Carlip acknowledges, implicitly:

1 Reply

@layman,

The article answers your question itself. That article is a press release proposing a problem with a specific experiment. It doesn't say what you think it does, and the actual discussion requires advanced math to understand anyway.

Being able to google random articles is hardly a replacement for actually taking the time to study advanced math and science to actually understand what you are talking about.

1 Reply

@maxdancona,

Quote:

The internet is filled with discredited theories... including Lorentzian relativity.. and ideas and peer reviewed papers.

If you think lorentizian relativity, as described by Van Flandern, has been "discredited," I'm afraid you're just demonstrating how little you know, not how much.

You seem to be claiming that you personally know more than authors of peer-reviewed papers like this guy:

Quote:

Van Flandern, jointly with Jean-Pierre Vigier (who was an assistant to Louis de Broglie and was also invited to be an assistant to Einstein but had to decline) wrote a paper called "Experimental Repeal of the Speed Limit for Gravitational, Electrodynamic, and Quantum Field Interactions." It was published in "Foundations of Physics."

According to wiki, "Jean-Pierre Vigier was a theoretical physicist, known for his work on the foundations of physics, and in particular on his stochastic interpretation of quantum physics."

Forgive me if I think I detect an element of hubris here, OK?

1 Reply

@layman,

You are arguing by google... do you realize why that is silly? Google is not a replacement for the knowledge you would get if you actually studied.

But, I will play along. what year was this paper published? And do you really believe that a single (even peer-reviewed) paper means anything?

1 Reply

@maxdancona,

Yeah, yeah. And catholic priests are the only one's who are personally in touch with, and capable of understanding and explaining the nature of god and life, too, eh?

What's your scientific status? Priest? Archbishop? Pope?

I don't think any of them could be as pretentious and dogmatic as you come across as being.

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@maxdancona,

Quote:

It doesn't say what you think it does...

I didn't cite the article, as you did. How would you know what I "think it says?" The appropriate question is does it support the claim that YOU said it does, which was:

Quote:

@layman,
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn3232-first-speed-of-gravity-measurement-revealed.html#.VRbKn3W9_3A

There is overwhelming amount of evidence that gravity travels a C, and every experiment we do adds more

Well, does it? Yes or no?

1 Reply

@layman,

Van Flandern is pseudo-science.

He was apparently a good physicist in the 1970s. He then went nuts, advocating several crazy theories including the idea that there was an advanced civilization of Martians leaving behind humanoid faces in rocks.

Reputable scientists understand this is nonsense. You can choose to believe it, but the people who are actually making advances in the field of physics don't.

Do you believe there is a face on Mars left by ancient beings?

1 Reply

@maxdancona,

Quote:

He then went nuts..

Got anything other than false ad hominem attacks? Steve Carlip (who you have approved) spent 3 years debating this guy on the internet, and came away the better for it-read the acknowledgments.

I notice you didn't have any attack to make on his world-renowned co-author, Jean-Pierre Vigier. I also notice that you just continue to duck a simple, yes or no question.

I don't care for your tactics, sorry. They might convince some chump, but, that aside, they are wholly unpersuasive--to the point of being worthless, sorry to have to say.

2 Replies

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