can we use gravity to communicate data across space

so now that we KNOW gravity is a wave, and other than black holes or other HUGE masses like neutron stars really distort it to the point of macro effects.

if we were some how able to make a small singularity or make neutron star mater or whatever sci fi method to produce gravity waves, could you send out a signal that could transmit data.

Gravity as far as we know is everywhere and permeates everything, how fast would this type of communication be? light speed? what is gravities max speed?

i bet you it would be a lot faster than microwave transmitters and would more than likely not suffer from the same issues as laser(any light) communication.

and on that note if gravity is a wave that means if we could 'reflect' gravity we could make a gravity laser, what would that even act like? my guess is that it would be a bad idea to use one on earth.

but if you had this GRAser you could aim it at whatever you were trying to communicate with and as far as we know there is no material gravity cant pass into it, not to mention that it would probably never go out of 'focus'.


they say gravity is the weakest force, i think that is because it passes across ALL dimensions so the amount of gravity you universe has might be a function of how many other universes/brane's gravity had to pass across until it reaches our brane/universe.

imagine if we could talk or even see into those other branes, would we still find silence?

this might be why SETI isn't getting much of anything other than the WOW signal, they aren't using the right transmission bands. Imagine a radio that wasn't effected by line of sight or distance.

The varying gravity beam is commonly called a disrupter. It destroys by shaking the atoms apart by its varying field. If the field is constant, you have a tractor beam. The reflector you mention is a gravity drive.

There is no difference between the speed of gravity and light as they are both massless waves. I googled both speeds and they are listed as the constant c. There is no speed advantage to gravity waves.

It all boils down to being able to control gravity and humans have no practical technology to do this yet.

a reply to: penroc3

A quick internet search provides that gravity waves travel at the speed of light.

No faster.

So a gravity-based communication system would be no faster than an ordinary laser-based system.

a reply to: beyondknowledge

Beat me to it

a reply to: Mantiss2021

While the speed of gravity and light are constant and the same, the speed of posting varies because of many factors.

Tachyonic particles is the way to go

a reply to: Mantiss2021

of course it cant go faster than light

a gravity beam or laser seems like it could be 1)devastating weapon 2) a communication method that as far as we know could be received anywhere.

gravity is litterly part of the fabric of space time so it is part or 'in' everything so it not like a dust cloud or EMP or whatever is in the way could block the signal

on the space station they are experimenting using a xray beam to send highspeed data, obviously that has to be in space because of beam attenuation

a reply to: penroc3

I am not understanding how you think passing through a cloud of particles would not interfear with the signal. It is proven that gravity bends light, gravity lens, so why would gravity not bend gravity? They are both waves of electromagnetic radiation by some theories.

a reply to: penroc3

could you send out a signal that could transmit data?

Yes, and no. Yes, you can use your graviwaves as a highly inefficient communication tool: send a graviwave (bit 1), do not send a graviwave (bit 0).

No, you cannot modulate gravitational waves, so the only information you can send is just 2 bits.

a reply to: Direne

then you just get a high speed switch

if you can turn on and off a beam or block and unblock it that you could get upwards of megahertz pretty easy.

i think it would be something like the internet when it first came out with 14.4 bits/sec and now i have a fiber line into my personal house.

back in the late 90's to recently that residential fiber lines were just not feasible, now its 30$ a month.


if we can send even one bit that means we can send more faster, once something is shown to be real and very useful companies dump cash into it and make it better.

Nice topic penroc3



I posted a somewhat tangential thread on using, let's call it astronomical phenomenon, as a means of communication, some time ago. I didn't originate the concept/idea, but it was the central plot theme from a book I'd read.

I think it's an intriguing idea, but I would probably advocate sticking with some form of comms using parts of the EM spectrum or lasers/concentrated light.

As others already laid out, Einstein's general theory of relativity set forth the speed of light, and this speed is also the upper bounds at which any matter, other than say theorized exotic particles or forces we don't yet understand, can travel through spacetime. So gravwaves don't buy us anything in terms of the alacrity of information we could send.

Further, gravity is still subject to the inverse square law, so we are not gaining any edge in the distance we can send information, vs light/EM radiation.

So if gravwaves don't allow us to send information farther or faster than what we use know for communication, then, what is the payoff for using it? One idea popping into my mind is that it could be a very clever way to prevent interception of a signal. Anybody can see pulses of light. Probably anybody with tech newer than circa the early 20th century can detect EM radiation. But gravity...if someone were to figure out how transmit data via gravwaves, very few people on Earth right now (and perhaps even off Earth!) would have the instrumentation/expertise to detect the gravwaves. Even with very simple encryption, you might have yourself the perfect transmission medium, at least for some time.

All of this is predicated on our ability to generate gravwaves. Our understanding on how that process works right now is that the intensity of gravity is proportional to mass in an area of space time. If we somehow figure out how to generate gravwaves, that would imply that we had learned how to cancel and un-cancel mass (which would form the peaks and troughs I guess of our information wave), and if we knew how to do that....the implications go far beyond data transmission.

Very neat discussion.

a reply to: beyondknowledge

the signal might get bent or lensed, sure.


but the point i was making is that gravity is everywhere and as far as we know doesnt have a counter force, there is nothing i can build to block the effects of gravity(apparently).

a planet could be in the way of you beam and it might get slowed down a bit but the signal still exists in the wave.

heck we could use suns and black holes and neutron stars at switching stations or use the lensing effect to aim your beam


when you tune a radio the static is from background noise, on a gravity radio all you would hear is the signal you sent, and you could have unlimited channels by using different beam modulations.

so even if you could only send one bit per channel if you have millions of them than that isn't really an issue.

originally posted by: Direne
a reply to: penroc3

could you send out a signal that could transmit data?

Yes, and no. Yes, you can use your graviwaves as a highly inefficient communication tool: send a graviwave (bit 1), do not send a graviwave (bit 0).

No, you cannot modulate gravitational waves, so the only information you can send is just 2 bits.

Why would you not be able to modulate gravitational waves? If you can approximate a series of masses between say something the size of the moon and the Earth (incredibly big IF and far fetched idea, I concede), then there is your amplitude modulation. If you want frequency modulation, you change/scale the mass involved but just how rapidly you switch your "mass canceler" on/off, like penroc mentioned.

I don't think retrofitting an analog signal to a digital interpretation would work like that, or at least, you would have to stipulate some very complicated encoding rules to understand the difference between absence of a graviwave interpreted as the unset bit, versus transmission disruption, EOS, or other signal anomalies.

a reply to: SleeperHasAwakened

Why would you not be able to modulate gravitational waves?

Because gravitational field is non-linear, while electromagnetic field is linear. That's why. If two masses produce each a gravitational field, acting together they produce a resulting field which is not the direct sum of each individual field. The resulting field is far more complicated. And if you use three masses, then the chances you could compute the resulting field vanishes.

See, electromagnetic field is a vectorial field, while gravity is a tensorial field. It has 4x4=16 different components. Maxwell's equations cannot be used with gravity fields. With EM field you can do a lot of things like, for instance, modulating the field. With graviwaves the only thing left is just the carrier: no modulation allowed.

To complicate things, gravity interacts with itself, that's why detecting graviwaves is so difficult, setting aside other considerations. However, you can use graviwaves as a death-hand beacon, or a positional beacon. But there is no way to use them the way you use electromagnetic waves. Gravitational waves are a disturbance of space-time itself, while EM waves are not.

a reply to: Direne

makes you wonder about some of those FRB's and odd neutron star placement

a reply to: penroc3

You need to study knife edge propagation, two slit experiment, and the invention of radar. They will all help you understand that if gravity is waves it is just like light or radio, the more paths the signal has, the worse the signal gets when it interfears with itself.

The universe is also full of light and radio waves, what makes gravity different?

On the gravity radio you would hear stars wobbeling as their planets orbit them, things swirling into black holes, stars exploding by going nova, galaxies colliding, etc.... Basically any gravity disturbance in the direction you are listening in. It would not be any where near silent.

a reply to: penroc3

Yes, there are beacons and signals criss crossing the Universe which are intentional and originated by intelligent life forms. But you need to discover them, and to recognize them.

There are potential ways to communicate with your distant cousins. For instance, you can modulate the signal from a pulsar. You need to inject or perturb the beam. Pulsar signals are seen by many stelar systems. You can also use nanopulses of light. And you can always do the only possible thing if you wish to communicate with the other end of the Universe: kinetic mixing of entangled particles. The problem is that you need apriori knowledge of whether your cousins are because all of these methods are highly directional.

But I tell you something: there are other guys out there, just like you, scratching their heads to work out how to communicate with you. Eventually, you will establish contact. And then...

Until someone figures out how to break the light speed limit, all of this discussion is useless. You would be listening to a signal that was sent hundreds if not thousands of years ago. The society that sent it has moved on or was destroyed lifetimes ago.

Unless they just transmitted their faster then light technology plans on a continuous loop, both for communication and travel, they should never expect an answer. The same would apply to us sending a message out. Unless someone is listening a long time in the future, in the direction we were in when sent, and with the right equipment to hear and decode the siginal, it won’t be heard.

a reply to: beyondknowledge

we will never break that speed limit, we might go around it put not past it.


we will have to find some sort of work around like worm holes or 'stepping' out of this dimension and step back in to the spot you want to be in. it would look like you traveled no distance and just pop into the place you were going.

a reply to: penroc3

I agree. In that case, the communication would go back to being like in the 1700s ships. You get news in established ports and if lucky, mail from scheduled stops.

Possibly daily comunication drones sent to and from home world. Nothing like radio available except for within the same star system.