Sayonara Posted May 7, 2007 Posted May 7, 2007 Okay, back on topic everyone. The crazy talk has been moved elsewhere by staff so any more persistent de-railing of the thread is going to result in a suspension.
GutZ Posted May 8, 2007 Posted May 8, 2007 You have no idea how badly I want to understand what you all have said; I really have to just take physic courses...because like I dont even know what "Minkowski space-time" is.
Farsight Posted May 8, 2007 Posted May 8, 2007 I rather think photons are gravitons too. Matter/energy "causes" gravity. Typically a star will loss mass by shining and pouring out light. (Yes, there's solar wind with actual matter flying out, but let's disregard those for now). A photon has energy, or even is energy, and that means it has gravity. You just can't separate out the gravity from the mass/energy. You can't effect a change in a star's gravity without removing some matter/energy. Hence you can't expect to see any free-standing gravitons. IMHO they're a mathematical abstraction that paint the wrong picture.
ajb Posted May 10, 2007 Posted May 10, 2007 I rather think photons are gravitons too. Matter/energy "causes" gravity. Typically a star will loss mass by shining and pouring out light. (Yes, there's solar wind with actual matter flying out, but let's disregard those for now). A photon has energy, or even is energy, and that means it has gravity. You just can't separate out the gravity from the mass/energy. You can't effect a change in a star's gravity without removing some matter/energy. Hence you can't expect to see any free-standing gravitons. IMHO they're a mathematical abstraction that paint the wrong picture. Photons are not gravitons. What is true is that they interact, this is becasue as you said photons carry energy. You can see they are not the same as although gravity and electromagneism are similar in many ways they are not the same. One main difference is that gravity appears to be only attractive as opposed to electromagnetism. This quantum mechanically manifests itself as the gravition being either spin-0 or spin-2. In fact in order to give the predictions of GR it must be spin-2. Other spins can be ruled out, fermionic gravitons won't give the 1/r^2 law, spin-1 can give a negative energy for static interactions and spins >2 are quantum mechanically inconsistent. They are thought to be massless as gravity is a long range force. However, it maybe possible to give them a tiny mass. But as GR is a gauge theory, I would expect the graviton to be massless.
Severian Posted May 10, 2007 Posted May 10, 2007 I rather think photons are gravitons too. If they were the same, either neutral objects wouldn't feel any gravity, or massive objects would have a huge electric charge. They are clearly not the the same thing.
ajb Posted May 10, 2007 Posted May 10, 2007 If they were the same, either neutral objects wouldn't feel any gravity, or massive objects would have a huge electric charge. They are clearly not the the same thing. An elementary but decisive observation.
swansont Posted May 10, 2007 Posted May 10, 2007 We can also shield objects from electric and magnetic interactions without affecting the gravity.
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