quote:
Originally posted by Kimball:
...I don't know that I buy the "gravity waves" thing. I tend to believe the warped space theory of gravity that Einstein proposed.
The gravity waves come straight from Einstein's theory. Think about it this way: suppose one member of a binary star system suddenly supernovas, taking out its partner. Locally, the warping of space changes "instantly", but far away no one knows yet that anything has happened. The light from the nova hasn't reached them. Everything looks normal. According to relativity, the warping of space far away will also remain unchanged at first. The change in the warping will propagate outward at the speed of light. That is what is meant by a gravity wave.
You might be thinking of gravitons, which at this point is more of a name than a serious theory. They are supposedly the particles that mediate the gravitational force, the quanta of gravity, analogous to photons. But no one has come up with a working theory of quantum gravity, so the jury is still out on whether or not gravitons actually exist.
Re: Theoretical Physics [OT thread]
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