Virtual Particles and Gravity

[Kylonicus]

Howdy, this idea may be flawed, may have alot of bugs, but it's something I think is fun to tinker with.

 

What if gravity is simply the absence of virtual particles?

 

Like, matter exist, it creates some form of field which pushes or inhibits virtual particle formation, then it creates something sort of like a space vaccum. Like with the Casmir effect.

 

The reason light can only travel so fast is because it has the capacity to only push X amount of virtual particles out of it's way at a time, and so that limit inhibits it's capacity to travel through space, which would mean in curved space time you'd travel faster.

 

The reason that things would slow down while in a virtual vaccum field, is that matter or energy is being pushed in the direction and is in a way linked to all the other matter and so to pull on it, pulls on everything else, so time moves slower inside this virtual vaccum field or gravity bubble than outside of it.

 

Anyway, it's just a fun hypothesis I came up with,

 

It would be testable too!

 

If you had some sort of gravity detector, and you applied the Casmir effect, there should be a very, very small but there would be an effect of gravity if this hypothesis were true.

 

Not something I put a huge amount of faith in, but just something I came up with in my spare time.

 

Anyway...

[Kylonicus]

I think I posted in the wrong section, this should have been in modern theoretically physics.

 

Oh well, hindsight 20/20

[Janus]

Howdy' date=' this idea may be flawed, may have alot of bugs, but it's something I think is fun to tinker with.

 

What if gravity is simply the absence of virtual particles?

 

Like, matter exist, it creates some form of field which pushes or inhibits virtual particle formation, then it creates something sort of like a space vaccum. Like with the Casmir effect.

 

[/quote']

 

Think about this for a second. If matter forms a field which inhibits virtual particles, and it this that produces the effect of gravity, then how could we see the Casimir effect in experiments done inside of that field?

 

Also, if this field around planets inhibits virtual particles, then it would have to inhibit the virtual particles that hold the nucleus together. Thus there should be more of these virtual particles in a nucleus which has been removed a large distance form any field source - a space probe between planets for example.

If there are more virtual particles holding the nuclei together they will be more stable. Since many space probes use nuclear decay as a power source, the energy from these sources would decrease or dry up completely during transit as they became increasingly more stable. Nothing like this has been observed in any such space probe.

[Kylonicus]

Interesting, well, it was worth a shot.

 

Thanks for the input, I won't waste any more time on that idea.

[Kylonicus]

I wasn't trying heavily to think about this, my mind was just wandering.

 

 

I was eating breakfast this morning, and something came to my head concerning this theory,

 

it's not quantum gravity that primarily holds the nucleus together and thus controls the rate of nuclear decay, it's gluons!

 

So that answers the second question.

 

If you were to somehow effect gravity by some means that doesn't mean that we wouldn't be able to observe it's results, also it wouldn't have to completely inhibit the virtual particles, it could just partially inhibit virtual particles, and so the Casmir effect could still be noticed.

 

I hope a debate gets going.

[Janus]

I wasn't trying heavily to think about this' date=' my mind was just wandering.

 

 

I was eating breakfast this morning, and something came to my head concerning this theory,

 

it's not quantum gravity that primarily holds the nucleus together and thus controls the rate of nuclear decay, it's gluons!

 

[/quote']

 

virtual gluons, just like virtual photons are responsible for mediating the electrostatic force.

[Severian]

So how do you transfer momentum between two particles without a mediating particle?