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Well, there are a number of teams around the world who are trying to build detectors to detect these ripples of gravity moving through space. The sensitivity you need to that is absolutely mind boggling. You're talking about distances of about a mile that you're sending light beams down and you're trying to see whether gravity is causing that distance to ripple by about the size of an atom. So, you've got an experimental setup a mile long and you're trying to detect something that's moving by the width of an atom.
originally posted by: charlyv
Advances in quantum physics are like a broken zipper. As we slowly pull it up, what is below it becomes unzipped. The analogy being that what we once held as rules and laws in the sciences, some start to come apart at the seams.
According to what science thinks today, it is anywhere from infinity (which is fairly close to instantaneously, but never gets there.), to 20x the speed of light (with some of the heaviest math that is conveniently left out of here, but referenced at the end of the post).
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originally posted by: moebius
a reply to: charlyv
According to what science thinks today, it is anywhere from infinity (which is fairly close to instantaneously, but never gets there.), to 20x the speed of light (with some of the heaviest math that is conveniently left out of here, but referenced at the end of the post).
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That is not what science thinks.
Are you seriously using Van Flandern as your reference for physics?
TL;DR the gravity vector always points at the instantaneous position of the source, the wave that bends the spacetime travels at c
www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments /1kjp6z/does_gravity_travel_at_the_speed_of_light_if_the/cbppd4b
So what does that mean? It means that the "speed of gravity" is the speed of light … technically. Changes in the geometry of spacetime actually propagate at the speed of light, but the apparent effects of gravitation end up being instantaneous in all real-world dynamical systems, because things don't start or stop moving or gain or lose mass instantaneously for no reason. Once you factor in everything you need to in order to model a real system behaving in a realistic manner, you find that all the aberrations you might expect because of a finite speed of light end up canceling out, so gravity acts like it's instantaneous, even though the underlying phenomenon is most definitely not.
The universe is pretty damn cool, if you ask me.
The interesting thing about science and physics is that every time a new discovery is made, it doesn't reject the old theory, but incorporates it into a grander scheme of things. Quantum Mechanics does not invalidate Newtonian Mechanics; it includes it within the fold.
originally posted by: moebius
a reply to: charlyv
According to what science thinks today, it is anywhere from infinity (which is fairly close to instantaneously, but never gets there.), to 20x the speed of light (with some of the heaviest math that is conveniently left out of here, but referenced at the end of the post).
...
That is not what science thinks.
Are you seriously using Van Flandern as your reference for physics?
In the simple newtonian model, gravity propagates instantaneously: the force exerted by a massive object points directly toward that object's present position. For example, even though the Sun is 500 light seconds from the Earth, newtonian gravity describes a force on Earth directed towards the Sun's position "now," not its position 500 seconds ago. Putting a "light travel delay" (technically called "retardation") into newtonian gravity would make orbits unstable, leading to predictions that clearly contradict Solar System observations.
In general relativity, on the other hand, gravity propagates at the speed of light; that is, the motion of a massive object creates a distortion in the curvature of spacetime that moves outward at light speed. This might seem to contradict the Solar System observations described above, but remember that general relativity is conceptually very different from newtonian gravity, so a direct comparison is not so simple. Strictly speaking, gravity is not a "force" in general relativity, and a description in terms of speed and direction can be tricky. For weak fields, though, one can describe the theory in a sort of newtonian language. In that case, one finds that the "force" in GR is not quite central—it does not point directly towards the source of the gravitational field—and that it depends on velocity as well as position. The net result is that the effect of propagation delay is almost exactly cancelled, and general relativity very nearly reproduces the newtonian result.
We conclude that the concept of frozen gravitational fields is acausal and paradoxical. Gravitational fields must continually regenerate, like a flowing waterfall. In doing so, they must consist of entities that propagate. And the speed of propagation of those entities must greatly exceed the speed of light.
Conclusion: The Speed of Gravity is ³ 2x1010 c
We conclude that gravitational fields, even “static” ones, continually regenerate through entities that must propagate at some very high speed, . We call this the speed of gravity. Equation [1] then tells us how orbits will expand in response to this large but finite propagation speed, since the field itself, and not merely changes in the field, will transfer momentum to orbiting target bodies. Rewriting equation [1] in a form suitable for comparisons with observations, we derive:
So I'm wondering how the Earth is gravitationally vectored in on where the sun is RIGHT NOW, not 8 minutes ago, but if the sun were to disappear, the Earth wouldn't know it for 8 minutes.
So, a few questions come up:
What is the speed of the propagation of gravity?
What is the speed of the propagation of magnetism?
Einstein's relativistic equation for gravity based on general relativity demands that gravity travels at the speed of light. However, quantum science is departing from that view.
Although they are not “particles’ (the “graviton” has not been identified), and are thought of as waves, they do have a propagation speed in which they influence objects around them, and this “speed” is most likely faster than light.
I think we would have at least detected micro gravity waves or something like that by now. But we have detected nothing like that yet which leads me to believe we never will.
originally posted by: charlyv
a reply to: CallYourBluff
I have great respect for the work of Robert Lanza. His work with stem cells and the regenerative capabilities in the human body are probably the forefront of this science presently. He incorporates quantum methods in his research and is a believer that our conscious mind has so many more abilities than we presently use, and also the way we approach experimentation actually changes the outcome and in essence creates reality. Here again, is a deep researcher who uses revelations in quantum research and produces results that still have so much mystery in their actual mechanisms. It is like jumping the gap, and not repairing the existing theories so they fully explain what is really happening. This is what I mean by the zipper analogy... Somewhere there is a profound and fundamental force in the universe that when we finally pin it down, will be a revelation that changes everything but explains why as well. Great video and thanks for the post.